Hatchlings…

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Last night I posted an update to social media more or less decrying the utter toolishness of both candidates for governor in my beloved home state of Maryland and putting myself forward as just the right third party candidate. It’s a happy fiction for a number of reasons. Not the least of those is the simple fact that as a employee of the United States I am legally barred from running for partisan office on any level – local, state, or federal. It’s just one of the many fun and interesting rules that apply to me under what’s commonly called the Hatch Act which is backed up by the full might and authority of the US Office of Special Counsel. They are not to be trifled with.

The short version of what could be a long and painful story is that the Hatch Act, among other things, seeks to ensure career civil servants are officially above the political fray and not drug kicking and screaming back to the bad old days of the spoils system, where good party men were put into positions of authority throughout the working levels of government without much consideration given to their actual knowledge, skills, and abilities. The sentiment is spot on. Having a cadre of people who are not beholden to any particular party for advancement is an unquestionably good idea. The political appointees at echelons higher than reality stand as a great reminder of the caliber you may end up with when decisions are based purely on party affiliation.

The problem of course is that Hatch essentially prevents the small segment of the population who know the problems inherent with the system best from running for office and doing something about it. It’s really elegant in its own way. Hatch effectively keeps the people who know first hand the problems created by politicians from entering the arena in an effort to unseat those same politicians. I’d like to say that’s purely coincidental, but my core cynicism simply won’t allow it.

Sure, I can participate in the process. I can vote, I can canvas, I can put a giant sign on my lawn, but as long as I want to keep getting a check from my currently employer, I can’t even touch the idea of running for office. It’s a pity really. Federal employees get a black eye in most discussions. Some of it is deserved, but in my experience they’re a pretty average group of people. Some are pure oxygen thieves, most are somewhere in the middle of the bell curve, and a few are truly world class minds. It’s a real shame that some of those deep thinkers are barred from getting into positions where they could do more than rearrange deck chairs.

Incantation…

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My entire life, I’ve been searching for just the right combination of words. I’ve always been convinced that words are important. They have meaning. I’m convinced that the right word and the right time can save your soul. In the right hands, words are a real thing of beauty. In the wrong ones you wonder if we all weren’t better off huddled around a paleolithic fire grunting and pointing to make our will known.

Maybe I’m biased because words are the gift I got. Other people got chiseled good looks and a full head of hair. I got words. That’s not a complaint. If I had to pick, I wouldn’t have had it differently. Words are my big gun. They’re the thing in my arsenal that make me think if I look just hard enough, put them in the right order, speak the incantation just so, I can turn the tide. It might not always seem this way, but when the moment calls for it I can be one seriously articulate sonofabitch.

I can count the times words let me down on one hand – maybe two if I really stretch way back. Those moments stand out mostly because they’ve almost always come as a complete shock. Words move people when you get them in the proper order and everything is supposed to follow from there. Except sometimes they don’t follow. Much to my chagrin I’ve had to learn repeatedly that you hit every syllable dead on and still fail to make a mark or carry your point. They’re not moments I like to dwell on, even though I’ve been doing that quite a bit these last few days.

It’s one of those unfortunate instances when best effort doesn’t stack up to good enough. It’s humbling and paves the way to all manner of self-doubt. It’s a bad head space to be in, but you can’t fight it – not directly, anyway. The best I’ve ever been able to manage is to drop my shoulder and shove through while hoping it doesn’t take too long to blunder through to a point where the world feels normally again.

Should’ve learned to weld…

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Monday evening. Milepost One in the long march towards the three-day weekend. One of my go to responses to many events at the office these days is an exasperated reminder to the world that I could have learned to weld, apprenticed to be a plumber, or picked up any number of practical skills that ensured my long term employability. I’m told that at least one of my high school teachers recommended that amidst my perpetual struggle to grasp the basic concepts of algebra. Perhaps the old crank was on to something after all.

Instead of doing something productive like learning carpentry, I went to college and promptly put the thought of alternatives out of my head. I do wonder sometimes at what kind of difference it would have made had I found myself practicing an occupation where the end result is something to physically show for your efforts at the end of a day’s work. At least part of me thinks that’s got to be personally fulfilling on some level. Or maybe from where I sit it just seems more fulfilling than being the guy who churns out the memo with the fewest spelling and punctuation errors.

At the rate my bits and pieces seem to be grinding down, I’m not under any delusions of transforming myself into a tradesman at this late date. Between the shoulder problems, lower back pain, clicking knee, and the occasional bit of foot trouble behind a desk is probably the most reasonable place in the world for me to stay. While I’m there, though, I’m going to spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking that I should’ve learned to weld. With all the wisdom of hindsight I think a career that results in something less ephemeral than a voluminous stack of PowerPoint slides would have suited me.

Absolutely inconceivable…

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inconceivableSure, I’ve been a curmudgeon for as long as I can remember, but the flood of pictures this weekend of many, many of my friend’s kids heading off to homecoming left me feeling a bit like I’d stepped through the looking glass. I mean weren’t we the ones going to those dances just a year or two ago? It’s inconceivable that anyone I grew up with could be old enough to comment about their offspring’s high school milestones.

Despite my 9PM bed time, constant state of near exhaustion, and the nagging aches and pains that seem to accompany me everywhere now, I don’t feel like all that much time has passed. I don’t feel that far separated from our younger selves. Maybe I’m better informed, a little more cynical, and a lot more medicated, but I still feel a strong connection to that dopy, awkward version of me.

Seeing so many of the next generation on the cusp of adulthood themselves is absolutely inconceivable. So if anyone needs me, I’ll be busy rejecting reality… and possibly checking to see if we can get a group discount if we all order our Life Alert systems at the same time.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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I usually give WAJTW over to three short, unrelated snippets of stupid that I’ve encountered during the week. From time to time, though, a single issue is of such magnitude that I feel it’s worthy of undivided attention. This week is one of those occasions.

For the last two months, we’ve been hearing around the office all manner of things about a “climate survey” conducted earlier this summer. Most of the time these surveys come and go without much notice. I don’t know exactly what the responses were in this most recent round of questioning, but I can only surmise that the results were beyond bad. It’s the first time in almost 13 years that I’ve ever seen an organization actually do something in response to their survey.

I should draw a line of distinction here between doing “something” and doing the right thing. So far, my little slice of the organization has been talked through the survey results on five separate occasions. We’ve now had two sessions with different groups allegedly to discuss what our perceptions of the problems are. Today marked (I think) the 8th time that we dedicated at least an hour or more of the work day to this topic. You’d think by now there would be more than a passing awareness at echelons higher than reality of what the issues are, who’s responsible, and the effects it’s having across the workforce.

What I’ve seen so far is that we’re spending a hell of a lot of time talking about things. What I haven’t seen is anyone actually doing something with the mountain of information they’ve already been given. I’ve been around long enough to know that the game plan probably involves talking about it for so long that people forget there’s actually a problem… Which in all likelihood makes much of the last two months a very large effort to check off the “we hear your concerns and are doing something about it” box.

On that score the powers that be are right. They’ve done just enough to demonstrate initiative, but not nearly enough to make a damned bit of difference… and thus does the great green machine go rolling along.

Tinfoil hat society…

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Let’s take a minute and look at the headlines tonight: Ebola is loose in the United States for the first time in recorded history, they’re protesting for democratic reforms in China, Europe’s economy appears to be at stall speed, and it wouldn’t take much more than a stiff wind to push ours in the same direction, the Secret Service is letting armed felons within arms reach of a sitting president. In general, civilization seems to be beset and besotted at every turn.

300px-Tin_foil_hat_2I’ve never been a dues-paying member of the Tinfoil Hat Society, but I do think the world we live in bears a closer look. Two things immediately jump to mind: 1) It doesn’t matter if it’s the local station, the cable networks or the internet, bad news makes people want to look and generates revenue from advertising sales; 2) Most of the asshattery I see in the world more or less confirms my preconceived notions about people as a group; and 3) Just by virtue of the law of large numbers, even paranoid people have to be right occasionally.

I could probably get a thousand new views a day if I gave this site over to ranting and raving about global conspiracies. The fact is, after having spent my adult life in public service I have my doubts about any organization being able to pull together a grand scheme to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids. More importantly, I throughly doubt their ability to do it in anything approaching secrecy. I mean I’m not allowed to build a 10 slide PowerPoint briefing without soliciting input from at least 14 other people, so you can understand how I might doubt the ability of an unknown global organization to rig the economy, unleashing a pandemic, and engineer a catastrophic war between East and West in complete secrecy.

I tend to think the long laundry list of things that go wrong are attributable to not much more than our collective bad decision making catching up with us. It feels like a simpler and more rational explanation than a transcontinental conspiracy bent on controlling everything everywhere. I’m pretty sure I’m right about that.

Then again, my assumption of being right won’t keep me from picking up a box of latex gloves, a few bottles of alcohol, and some surgical masks. Just in case.

Unglued…

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I’m not ashamed to admit that I was as close to coming unglued today as I’ve been in at least four years. At one point around 2:30 this afternoon, email was hitting my inbox and I was taking on so much verbal guidance that I’m pretty sure I could see the code in the matrix. I wish I was joking. There was a minute there this afternoon when I’m almost positive that I could hear the synapses firing in my brain.

In the middle of my boss talking to me I squeezed my eyes shut and rubbed my temples, muttering something to the effect of “I think I’m losing my mind back here.” At least I think that’s what I said. Whatever it was that came out of my mouth in that moment must have been a doozy because the boss’ face was a decided mixture of curiosity and concern when I opened my eyes. It wasn’t my finest moment. Then again, it wasn’t anything close to a good day, so I don’t know why it would be.

I don’t mind hard work – physical, mental, it makes no difference to me. I’m the guy who comes home from his day job and spends another four hours at the keyboard chasing the dream of making a living and a life from the written word. I’m the guy who spends hours on the yard until it looks “just so” and order has been restored from the chaos. With that being said, I need to note that there’s only one of me. I can’t change one thing sixteen times and have any hope of keeping up with the two dozen other things people want. I wish I could tell you that I could. Hell, I wish I actually could do it all but there are limits… and I’m old enough to know better than to spend all day every day working beyond those limits. Nothing good comes from that.

So tomorrow I’m going into the day knowing that I’m already running close to max RPM. Some people are happy enough to rev the engine until it blows apart. I’m not one of them and will make decisions accordingly.

Light, gas, and water…

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With the potential future sale of Casa de Jeff de Cordova, one of the myriad of pain in the ass things to do is transfer the light, gas, and water service back into my name. That should be easy enough to settle with a phone call to the intrepid people at Memphis, Light Gas, and Water except of course that nothing that needs doing is ever actually easy.

mlgwlogo_aIt seems that the bill from the last month I lived in Memphis was never actually paid and has been sitting in their delinquent account file for the last 3+ years just waiting on the moment I would call to make it right. We’ll forget for a moment that I never actually received a bill for this amount and that as far as I can tell, no effort was made to send it to my forwarding address. I’ll take the burden of responsibility for that. Fine.

Now, these many years later, here I am attempting to make good on my public debt. In speaking to the customer service agent, I’m told that the only way to pay a bill in the delinquent file is to present myself at the offices of Memphis, Light Gas, and Water to genuflect and hand unto them cash, a money order, or a cashiers check for the princely sum of $110.87. No payment by phone. No payment online. Only hand delivery at the office will do with no possibility of exception for those who may now live 850 miles away from that charmed city on the banks of Old Muddy.

I’m trying to get myself right with these guys. All I want to do is give them money. You’d think they might make it easier on a guy than forcing him into a convoluted process that involves overnighting a cashiers check to a realtor he’s never met in person and hoping that she’s able to do the leg work on his behalf. The alternative is a one day round trip flight to Memphis wherein I will spend $1000 in order to pay a $100 debt.

Even sitting here in the comfort of my own rental kitchen, I can’t manage to avoid the utter asshattery of what is clearly demonstrating itself to be one of the world’s foremost bureaucratic organizations. And God knows as a cog in Uncle’s great machine I’m in a position to recognize both asshattery and bureaucracy when I see it.

Why I don’t trust Fridays…

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Almost universally people in the western world welcome Friday as the gateway to the weekend. I was like that once, but that hasn’t been for a very long time. More often, Friday’s are when someone at echelons higher than reality has an “oh shit” moment and realizes that they have a bright idea that can’t possibly wait until Monday to pass around. That leads to unplanned meetings and basically having the day’s entire agenda thrown over the side well before the end of the day.

If I can use this past Friday as my case in point, here’s the high points for the day:

– 10:00AM – Spend an hour trying to find diplomatic way to avoid taking guidance from people I don’t work for, but who outrank me by like 173 levels.
– 11:29AM – Realtor 1 calls with full-price offer on the Memphis house.
– 11:42AM – Realtor 2 calls with confirmation that the St. Mary’s Condo has been leased.
– 12:15PM – Signed acceptance of the offer on the Memphis house.
– 12:34PM – Received copy of signed lease for St. Mary’s condo.
– 4:00PM – End of Tour / Stuck in ongoing meeting
– 4:31PM – Actual End of Tour
– 4:35PM – Realtor 1 calls to say there’s a problem with the paperwork and buyer wants to reopen negotiation.
– 4:36PM – Inform Realtor 1 that I’m already giving the house away and don’t intend to get mugged too.
– 4:45PM – Truck windshield cracks
– 5:15PM – Arrive home / Find rum
– 7:59PM – Realtor 1 calls to tell me the buyers decided the paperwork was ok as written.
– 8:00PM – Bangs head on table repeatedly while mumbling softly to self.
– 9:00PM – Lights out / Quiet reflection / Fight urge to set the world on fire.

That, in so many nut shells is how I’ve found most Fridays tend to go. Whatever stupid hasn’t happened during the other four working days of the week will accrete to Friday and conspire to overwhelm you in an absolutely unpredictable avalanche of equally ridiculous, but mostly unrelated events. So yeah, you could say I have trust issues with Friday.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Decisions. I’m theoretically leading a project right now. I say theoretically because every time we get together to discuss it, we revisit and rehash decisions that I was under the impression were made a month or two ago. But no, instead of actually trying to move the ball forward, we want to spend our time going over and over and over and over and over the same damned material. I have to wonder if the weekly outcome would be any different if organizations didn’t send a different representative to this exercise in futility each week. Then maybe we could get a little institutional memory going and I could wrap up a Thursday without without my blood pressure treading dangerously close to stroke territory. All for the want of decisions that actually stick once they’re made.

2. Thursday Dinner. I try to cook a big meal every Sunday – enough so there are two or three days of leftovers and I don’t have to do any heavy cooking after work. By Thursday night, though, even the biggest of meals has either disappeared into my gullet or is just no longer appetizing. As much as a creature of habit as I am, eating the same dinner four days in a row is a touch too far for me. That’s generally how you end up having scrambled eggs and cinnamon toast for dinner on Thursday night. Not that I dislike either of those things, but after a long stupid day something more substantial would have been nice. Sadly, something more substantial would have also required far more effort than I was willing to put in.

3. Guilt. Most nights, especially now that it’s getting dark earlier, Maggie and Winston are happy to snooze peacefully under the kitchen table while I try to combine words into sentences and sentences into complete thoughts. On other nights, Winston tries to be a 40 pound lap bulldog and Maggie somehow manages to wedge herself between my elbow and the keyboard. They’ve been in “needy” mode all week… and while I couldn’t do without them, it would be nice if I’d have bothered to raise more independent children.