Tag Archives: blog

Five…

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I don’t usually post on Fridays because they tend to be the black hole of blogging. No matter how interesting a post you have, no one is going to see it anyway so it’s generally better to hold it for the next week.

Today is one of those rare exceptions to the rule simply because this is the 5 year anniversary of my transition to WordPress and the introduction of jeffreytharp.com. Big milestone here. It’s the rare bird indeed that manages to hold my attention through 1,826 days, 37,628 views, and 500 comments.

Thanks to everyone who’s been around since the beginning. Welcome to those who are just joining us. I like to think I’m still getting warmed up and finding my stride in the digital world… so we’ll just have to see how thinks look in another five years.

Master of my domain…

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I just renewed my domain mapping agreement with WordPress… which really only means that your bookmark to http://www.jeffreytharp.com will continue to work for the next year and you’ll be able to avoid tracking me down using the half-mile long default address assigned by WordPress when you start a free blog. Nothing online is really permanent, but through next February I’ll continue to be the master of my domain.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. I keep a running list of the absurdities of life that I think might be worthy of including in the week’s edition of WAJTW. Because this week happened to include a federal holiday, I’ve spent the whole week vaguely confused about what day of the week it happens to be. As a result, I reached to that list and accidentally used one of the annoyances as an actual fully fledged blog post. That doesn’t seem like it would be much of an annoyance aside from the fact that most things have broken my way this week and there wasn’t much of a list to begin with… which is exactly why the first annoyance for this week is strictly a process piece.

2. Sports metaphors. I’ve seen enough sports in my life to understand most of the metaphors, but I’ve never quite understood our desire to try to take the lessons of the field and apply them to every other aspect of life. Since I don’t generally follow sports in any meaningful way maybe the stories just don’t resonate for me in the way they seem to for other people. I’m just a guy with a hard time applying the relevant lesson of the scrappy underdog team to the issues I’m fighting with on the daily. I realize I’m probably the outlier here, so don’t mind me. If it looks like I’m stifling a yawn, that’s because I am.

3. Prius Drivers. On Tuesday morning I sat in the truck and watched a Prius driver open his door, lean halfway out of the car, and back into a parking space. The next nearest vehicle was mine and Big Red was at least two dozen spots away and in a completely different row. Look, I know I don’t have an unblemished record here, but backing up in an effectively empty parking lot and landing between the white lines just feels like something you should be able to do without needing to nearly exit the vehicle… Especially when your car takes up about as much square footage as my kitchen table. The poor schmuck didn’t even have a pair of passing yoga pants to use as an effective excuse.

For the love of our game…

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If there’s anything more thankless than going in to the office and trying to get some work done on the day before Thanksgiving, it’s got to be posting a blog later that same night when it’s virtually guaranteed that absolutely no one is going to be paying attention. The only thing in my favor is that here on the east coast we got the first snow of the season, so many potential readers might just be sitting the night out at home. I’m not holding my breath on that, of course, which is why you’re reading this process piece instead of seeing anything remotely resembling meaty content.

After more years that I want to think about, I really do have a sense for how scheduling drives the number of posts. It’s a blessing and a curse since it means sometimes I’ll withhold some good writing until I know more than a few people will be paying attention. It also drives the fact that I almost never post on Friday and Saturday. Sadly the world has better things to do on those days than listen to another blow hard ranting on the internet. I’m not selling any advertising here, but still it’s nice to know that what you write has got a fighting chance of being seen… because no matter how much noise we make about writing for ourselves and not for an audience, we really, really want the audience.

So as you’re sitting there, toasty warm in front of your pre-Thanksgiving fire, sipping your nog (or whatever it is you’re supposed to sip at Thanksgiving), think of the poor harried bloggers out there smashing away at their keyboards and wanting nothing more than a few more people to drop by their site. Take a little time tonight and poke around WordPress or Blogger and there’s a good chance you’ll run across someone whose voice you need to hear. It’s a jungle out there, but there are some incredibly good writers too who are just churning it out for the love of our particular game.

No promises

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I do my level best not to let a trifle like work interfere with the important work of blogging and trying to deliver my next sarcasm-laden book to an expectant world. Most days I’m successful on that front. This week, my expectations are somewhat more limited. Tonight for example I’m sitting here at the computer just barely able to keep my eyes open. It’s the second night in a row that I’ve been at least an hour late heading home and on balance the week should only really get worse from here.

I’ll make every effort to keep up with fresh posts for the duration, but let me go on record as making absolutely no promises in that regard. At the rate this week is currently spiraling out of control, by this time tomorrow it’s possible I’ll be subsisting entirely on a diet of coffee and whatever I can find from a vending machine. By Thursday I’m beginning to think I’ll have lost the capacity for coherent speech and default to communicating through prehistoric grunts and pointing in the general direction of what I want.

As far as I can tell at the moment, this week plans to be nothing but a time thief and that means you’ll have to suffer right along with me… so please forgive me for whatever drivel ends up filling these otherwise respectable pages over the next few days.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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Because I keep track of such things, I can tell you that this is the 150th weekly edition of What Annoys Jeff this Week. I have no idea whether I should be proud of that fact or horrified by it. Regardless, I’d have felt terrible in letting it pass without noting this small monument to one man’s ability to bitch and complain constantly and at length over long periods of time. As much as I’d like to just let this be a self-congratulatory post that feels like it would be something of a cop out… With that foremost in my mind, here are the three things that top my list of annoyances this week:

1. Forgetting. My memory has never been all that strong. Names? Forget it. I’ll forget a new person’s name before they’ve even left the room. There’s just something off with that part of my brain. I’ve learned to work around it without it usually being obvious. Forgetting the plastic pass that lets me into the building in the morning is something more problematic. That’s happened twice now in the last three weeks – both times because my pass was just a little off where where it normally sits. Apparently deviating from the morning routine even by as little as six inches one way or another is enough to mean I’ll end up driving 40 minutes to work, going home, and then trying the morning commute for the second time. If it happens again, I’m just going to staple the damned thing to my forehead and be done with it.

2. Realizing your own (lack of) importance. Most people don’t know this about me, but I have a long history of tilting at windmills. I’ve made staking myself to lost causes almost my life’s work. You could almost call me a patron of futility. It’s probably some kind of deep character flaw, but it’s been my mode of operation for so long that I’m not sure I’d know how to proceed any other way. Because of my windmill tilting tendencies I get to enjoy that awkward moment when you’re forced to admit that you’re nowhere nearly as important to someone as they’ve been to you. It’s a roundhouse kick to the ol’ ego. Fortunately I’ve got that in spades, although that still doesn’t make an distasteful truth any more palatable.

3. Missing deadlines. For the first time possibly ever, I’m facing a major project that in all likelihood I won’t be able to bring in on time. That’s made all the more problematic because there’s no option but to bring it in on time. There’s no rain date and the thing is going to happen no matter how many bits and pieces I’m still holding when the time comes. It’s infuriating because there was plenty of time to get everything in formation – right up until the point we (collectively) started getting sloppy and letting sloppy be ok. My inner perfectionist is aghast at the possibility.

My next fix…

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Usually I sit down at the computer with at least a vague notion of what’s going to end up on the screen. It should be something heavy, but not too bleak. Something entertaining, but not too frivolous. It should be witty, but not comical. None of those are hard and fast rules, of course. They’re more like selectively enforced guidelines. Since on any given day what’s going to end up online is up in the air right up until the last minute, I find it best to have very few hard and fast rules. All they tend to do is get in the way of posting something halfway interesting.

Even disregarding the guidelines, I’ve had some trouble today focusing in on what I wanted to say this evening. There were plenty of news articles that I could justifiably talk about. The office? Sure, it’s full of ridiculous things that would be easy enough to spell out in 300 words. The Fortress of Solitude? There’s always something dinging around that I can make sound new and noteworthy. Still, none of those struck a chord today. Nothing stood out screaming “write about me right the hell now.” Most days by the time I get home I’ve got two or three ideas in the running. Days like today, it’s like the theme is just grinding it out, jamming one foot ahead of the next, and getting through to the end.

It’s the kind of day that makes a guy appreciative of the other days – the ones where things go like butter, the words fly onto the page by their own accord, and you’ve got some spark of life left when the lights go out. Three-day weekends, man they mess with the routine. A holiday weekend is a great thing, but getting back makes me feel like a junkie coming down. There’s plenty going on around me, but all I’m really thinking about is where I’m going to find my next fix.

Humble…

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Sometimes the universe hands you the perfect blog-worthy topic, fills you with background material, and page after page of everything that makes for a good and entertaining read. Just as quickly you realize at those moments that you can’t use a damned word of it because just the act of writing about it would reveal too much about your sources and methods of data collection. I’ve got a damned masterpiece laid out in my head, but I can’t do a thing with it. It’s going to have to suffice to say that it would have been absolutely magnificent. Maybe someday it’s one of those notes I’ll be able to dust off and revive, but it feels like a moment that’s missed and forever gone. It will never be as technicolor real as it is today.

I try hard not to moderate my posts even in the interest of making life a little easier on myself, but sometimes you’ve just got to put it away for the sake of not picking a fight you’re not absolutely in a position to win. It’s one of the hard realities of blogging. Pitting your greater self interest against the desire to post a sensational piece of work is just one more way the writing process conspires to keep a guy humble.

The inevitable leggy brunette…

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I think I know why Hemingway went to places like Havana and Key West to do his writing. I can put more words on the page sitting in a dive bar perched at the end of a ramshackle pier than I can most days sitting in the comfort of my own kitchen. Working at home offers the distraction of the familiar and the hundred other things that need to be done to keep the household running. The dive is full of any number of exotic distractions, but they’re different somehow – almost inspirational in a way that your tired old Mr. Coffee and the hum of the refrigerator will never be. There’s something about being away from the familiar that lets the ideas come more freely. Who knows, maybe there really is something to being outside your normal box.

Plus, if only in my own deluded fantasy, when the inevitable leggy brunette slides in next to you with her CrossFit body and a voice of a 1940s Hollywood starlet asking what you’re doing, you can tell her you’re writing a novel… or a novella in my case… but you’re going to want to say novel because no one really knows what a novella is. Besides, chicks dig writers. Quiet down. I already pointed out this is my own deluded fantasy and not the real world where people stare at you blankly when you tell them your grand aspirations as a writer. Sadly, neither the fantasy brunette nor the writing career is really the point.

The only reason I bring any of this up is I’ve spent the last six weeks writing from notes I put together while I was at the beach. That’s six weeks working from material I put together in my spare time over three days and nights. I’d hate to think what my daily word count could jump to if not saddled by such trivial matters as having bills to pay and a full time job. Reality is an often troublesome taskmaster.

Tonight, much to my chagrin, I realized my bag o’ ideas was empty and what I reached for as a substitute turned out to be something I wrote extensively about in 2011. In fact that old post was so close in phrasing at some points that it was genuinely creepy to look at them side by side, but written almost exactly three years apart. I’ve always said that I value consistency, but in this one small area, I worry it could be too much of a good thing.

Aside from being damned inconvenient, it also means from now on I’m apparently going to have to search my own website to make sure what I’m having is a legitimately new idea before spending any time rehashing a chestnut from the past. New ideas get harder and harder to come by when you’ve strewn opinion online for as many as five nights a week for almost eight years. I’ll either need to change up the routine, start seeing different parts of the world, and interacting with new people. Or I’ll just have to spend more time at the beach coming up with ideas. When I put it that way, there doesn’t really feel like a contest about which I should do… because changing up the routine, seeing different things, and meeting new people sounds just awful.

Break’s over…

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So a few of you (probably those who haven’t been around very long) might think that after a four day hiatus from posting I’d be back and better than every. Sadly, only part of that is true. I’m back. It doesn’t feel like I’ve been gone. And the muse didn’t see fit to endow me with a week’s worth of brilliant posts for your amusement. Trust me when I tell you that I’m far more disappointed than you are about that particular turn of events. If you spend enough time writing (or trying to write), disappointment is just one of the emotions you learn to live with as a constant companion.

I’ve extended the long weekend one extra day so instead of throwing myself back to the wolves tomorrow I’ll ease into it on Wednesday. I’ll try not to rub in the fact that it’s only going to be a two day week for me, but I’m not going to lie and tell you that doesn’t make me awfully happy. Instead of brilliant posts of experiences on the road, I’ll be reaching into the old grab bag this week to see what notes I have left over from posts that never quite got fleshed out. It’s not the most original approach, but there are a few nuggets in there that are likely too good to waste. In the meantime, I’m sure that by mid-morning Wednesday the restive effect of these days off will have been worn away and I’ll find myself with plenty of new stuff that needs saying.

It’s Monday again and even though it’s not a “school night” for me, it definitely feels like the break’s over.