Just a theory…

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I won’t presume to speak for all the vast sweep of humanity, but sometimes I just hit a point in the day where no amount of additional effort is going to create any significant gains. It’s like trying to accelerate to the speed of light. Getting close is easy enough if you’ve got the right equipment, but getting that last little punch of speed requires the application of infinitely more energy. The problem being, of course, that it’s (under our current understanding of how the universe works) impossible to supply any system with infinite energy.

I hit just such a wall at 2:56 this afternoon. I mean I just hit a spot in the day that I couldn’t power through no matter how much coffee or sugar I poured into the system. My brain laid down a very clear line of demarcation, letting me know that I’d go no further. Maybe with a little more time I could have found a way to circle around and come at the day from a different angle, but with end of the day closing in, a new avenue of approach wasn’t really an option anyway.

Under the circumstances, the only thing to do was stiffen my upper lip and ride through the last hour of the day trying not to make waves or get noticed. My brain just wouldn’t answer the helm this afternoon and for a guy who pays the bills based on what the ol’ brain box puts out, it’s damned humbling experience. I’m going to write it off to being a problem transitioning to Daylight Saving Time and not as a harbinger of a God awful week waiting to happen. Check back with me on Friday to see how well that theory holds up.

A simple request…

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It was 60 degrees yesterday. I had the windows open taking advantage of a long awaited chance to air the place out – because face it, no matter how often you clean, living with two dogs and a tortoise is going to generate a certain amount of airborne funk no amount of spray cleaners and elbow grease will quite get rid of. Even today, with temperatures in the 40s, it’s a kind reminder than winter can’t maintain it’s grip on the Mid-Altlantic indefinitely.

Then, of course there’s the low rumblings I’ve heard that the cold weather may have a punch or two left in it this year. I’m studiously ignoring every television forecaster and website that’s trying to hype a mid-week winter storm. I don’t care whether it’s a full blown blizzard or just a glancing blow from something hitting New England. It quite simply needs to go away. I’ll be griping and complaining about the heat soon enough, but right now I really just need to feel temperatures in the 60s, hear the weekend hum of lawn equipment, and be able to leave the house in fewer than three layers. I’m a simple man and I don’t think that’s too much to ask from March.

Darkness at dawn…

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It occurs to me that when I wake up at the customary weekend time of 6:30 it’s going to be absolutely dark again at a time of day I’ve just started getting use to having light. Tomorrow, though, the sun will follow me up in short order. The big problem is coming on Monday, because 6AM looks awfully bleak when it’s pitch black outside.

There’s probably a fine balance that we could strike between springing forward and falling back. As I’ve covered before, I’d say just do away with the whole mess completely and let the time and daylight operate independently of one another rather than making a hash of yoking them together as we have for the last hundred odd years. Surely tinkering with the time could simply be solved by letting individuals adjust their own wake-up time to accommodate the mount of daylight they want earlier or later in their respective day.

Frankly the whole concept of daylight saving time feels like a concept that has outlived its usefulness. Now that we’re well into the 21st century and even farming can be done by GPS in the dead of night, why we can’t simply pick one or the other and stay there is simply beyond my meager abilities to understand.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Elections. So apparently the good people of Crimea can throw off their Ukrainian overlords, declare themselves sovereign, and promptly ask to be consumed by Russia all within ten business days. It makes one wonder why it takes us 20 months to gear up for a fairly straightforward presidential election in this country. Then again, I suppose it’s simpler when the whole thing is orchestrated in advance and the outcomes are always a foregone conclusion. Of course this whole discussion is pre-supposing that our own elections aren’t orchestrated in advance and the outcomes aren’t foregone conclusions. Food for thought.

2. Cash. Paper money still has it’s place. I think those who herald the death of the dollar bill are a bit premature in that regard. With that said, one of the places where no one has any business waving around paper money is at a toll booth during the peak rush of the afternoon commute. Pony up the couple of extra beans a year, get over your paranoia about tracking your car, and get with the ezpass program. No one needs to deal with your dumb ass dropping your $20 out the window and then being too close to the booth to open your door to retrieve it while they’re trying to get home. The only thing it says about you is that you are an unredeemable asshat.

3. Redaction. A moment ago this space was filled with a third point that was a scorcher. I was poured to overflowing with the kind of snark you’ve come to expect from jeffreytharp.com. Then, sadly, I highlighted every word and punched the delete key. Redacted. Because someone was probably going to get their little feelings hurt and end up being more of a enormous joy-suck then they are already. Some day I will have the chance to say everything that’s on my mind… and when that day comes, woe betide the poor feckless fool who tries to stand between me and saying my piece.

Interregnum…

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Most people who write never actually talk about how much their first drafts suck. Since I clearly have no shame, I’ll say it out loud and in a public forum: I know for a stone cold fact my first draft sucks. It’s legitimately awful. It’s full of spelling and grammar issues. It’s likely to have favored words and phrases repeated every few pages. There are whole sections that I’ll want to rip out, stomp on, and never think of again. That’s the nature of a first draft. As much as we’re tempted to think of it as the beginning of the end, it’s really just the end of the beginning.

My tendency, and I can only assume it’s shared by others, is to want to launch a new project out into the world as quickly as possible. Of course this is a terrible, terrible mistake because it doesn’t give you the time and space necessary to really work out the kinks and rough spots. Since I know that going into it, what I’m planning on doing now with this short story is absolutely nothing. I don’t want to re-read it. I don’t even want to think about it for at least two weeks. A month would be better if I can convince myself to stay away that long.

Time and distance is the only thing that helps give a layer of objectivity when I get back to a work in progress. For me at least, if I try to edit my own work just after it’s finished, I know I’ll do a lousy job of it. Being too close to the story, I’m reading what I think is there (or maybe what I wish was there), rather than the words that are actually on the page. Really editing your own work is mostly a fool’s errand. That’s why the best editors can make a boatload of money plying their trade. Those of us who can’t afford the best editorial support, simply make do by asking trusted associates to take on the job for peanuts. Frankly, if you’re interested in more than a free copy of the finished product, I probably can’t afford your editorial services at this point anyway.

So where I am now is in a bit of an operational pause, somewhere between active writing, re-writing, and editing. Since I’ve built up a good head of steam and have forced myself into the habit of writing every night, though, this isn’t the time to lay in the cut. My job now is to keep writing, even if that means taking on another project or maybe doing a little freelance work to keep my chops up. I’m tinkering with a few ideas and even managed to free write for a while last night which is something I rarely ever get the chance to do.

Whatever small project I take on during this damned interregnum, you can rest assured that it will be in some way geared towards continuing to build my little hobby into something a bit more substantial. This may never been what I do to pay the bills, but I’m still fairly certain it’s what I’m supposed to be doing.

Deception…

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In the universe of the bureaucratic underling, few things are more highly sought after than a cubicle next to a window. Generally assigned based on seniority in rank or time in service, it’s one of the small things that can make a cube feel less like a 5×8 coffin and more like an actual productive work area.

Sometimes, of course, appearances are deceiving. When you show up in a new office and there’s a prime window seat with your name on it, tread carefully. In any normal office, this seat would have been fought over and allocated long before you showed up. If it’s sitting empty, consider it a warning sign… Like the beautiful house on the tree lined street never quite seems to stay sold, there’s a fair chance this cube has problems. Someone might have died there in harness and it’s haunted or at a minimum it’s cursed by one or more of the myriad problems that tend plague a cubicle and all those who dwell in them.

If there’s any good news to be had it’s that not much in life is permanent. You’ll probably get a chance to move into something more attuned to your needs (eventually). Of course you’ll be leaving behind the window, but if a career in service has taught me anything, it’s that windows are easy enough to come by, but you only get a finite amount of sanity to shepherd you through 30+ years of toil. If you ever had to pick between the window and some sanity, it’s what you’d call no contest.

For more helpful tips someone really should have mentioned before letting you go to work as an office drone, don’t forget to get your very own copy of Nobody Told Me: The Cynic’s Guide for New Employees.

Selfie…

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So apparently last night Ellen DeGeneres posted a selfie of a ragtag band of Hollywood A-list celebrities that thundered across Twitter faster than any tweet in the history of the universe. That’s an interesting factoid, but while I’m sitting here getting caffeinated, I’m left mostly wondering why we care.

I like movies as well as anyone else, but I don’t lionize those who make them or endow them with super-human, superlative qualities beyond them being good at acting. That’s great. I’m glad they’re doing what they do, but I don’t want to get on the band wagon of anyone who thinks the biggest names in Hollywood are spending their days doing anything particularly heroic. They’re doing their job and that makes them professionals, not demi-gods.

It’s good that a professional organization like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences pauses for a few hours and recognizes member achievement. People should be recognized when they’re reached the top of their chosen field of endeavor. What I don’t particularly understand, though, is why anyone outside that field pays attention to what those individuals are wearing, who they’re screwing, or what they have to say about politics or current events. It’s a little like looking to the best dentist in America to give me fashion advice or to tell me how to build a suspension bridge. Sure, he might have an opinion, but it’s the furthest thing from his professional area of expertise.

There’s no real point to this little ramble aside from my own continued curiosity about why we collectively make a big deal about watching other people put on formal ware and sit in an auditorium for hours. I hate putting on so much as a tie whenever I can avoid it, so the idea of making an event out of watching other people wear uncomfortable clothing simply defies any kind of logic I can muster.

A religious experience…

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I don’t consider myself a Sunday service kind of guy. I’m willing enough to accept that there are powers in the universe at work well beyond the conception of the mind of man, but I have a hard time with the idea of a supreme being who’s interested enough in the proceedings of the men and women on this little rock of a planet to spend his entire day in judgement of our rights and wrongs. If there is more powerful force in the universe, I hope he has something better to do with his time time than watch our collective tomfoolery.

Assuming for a moment that there is someone with their hand at the helm, I suspect he’s a little too busy to worry about whether or not we all show up in a special building on Sunday mornings. I’m spending this one drinking what to my mind is some of the finest coffee ever roasted and listening to one of the greatest jazzmen of the 20th century. I’m celebrating nature’s magnificent bounty and the genius of the human mind. If that’s not a religious experience, I don’t know what is.

A matter of priorities…

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So Russia is back on the road towards rebuilding the old Soviet Empire. That’s bad, but it’s not what’s dominating my thoughts today. I’m my head I’m already projecting forward to Monday morning and wondering if the projected “winter weather event” will be enough to buy me just one more day of weekend. Maybe I’ve got my priorities all sorts of jacked up on that one, but Monday is the closest problem to me. Statistically, its arrival (and the ruination of the weekend) is an absolute certainty, making its bad results guaranteed to happen. Ukraine, on the other hand may or may not dissolve into civil war through the prodding of the Russians… and even if it does, that badness is less of a direct impact on me. Sure, it probably makes me a bad person to be more worried about Monday than another potentially catastrophic war starting in Eastern Europe, but if the rest of the world isn’t bothered that it’s on the fast track to hell in a handbag, I’m not going to waste a lot of time worrying either.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Trust. I’ve always been very open about the fact that I’m a cynical bastard. Even so, I’m always amazed at the level of trust people have in others that they really don’t know all that well outside a very narrowly defined context. Anyone can open their mouth at any time and tell you any manner of thing you want to hear… which is why I get immediately suspicious when they’re pitch is something akin to “Oh no, don’t worry about a thing.” There are a few exceptions to this rule, but it only applies to a select few who I’ve known for a decade or two.

2. Capitalism. I’m developing a rather intense hatred of capitalism, in which I’m throughly annoyed at the whole idea of getting up five days a week, slogging through traffic to arrive at work, spending 8.5 hours there, slogging through traffic to get home, going to bed, and then doing it all over again. Unfortunately, I have this insatiable appetite for “stuff,” which requires cash, which requires work. This is the 21st century. Why don’t we have robots doing all the grunt work leaving us free to not be bothered by such petty details as needing to trade time for money?

3. Seeing the bright side. Some people are hopelessly optimistic. They’d see the bright lining in a mushroom cloud. Sometimes, I don’t want to see the bright side. I want to sulk. I want to be annoyed. I want to be angry. and I want that feeling to spur me to action in a way that no amount of good feeling ever could. I’ve made plenty of bad decisions in haste and anger, but most of my best have also come from the same place. Even if it’s a mixed bag of results, it’s the spark that keeps things moving.