Tag Archives: blog

Bitching about…

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As a certain Facebook friend of mine is fond of pointing out, I have a bit of a tendency to “bitch about everything.” Guilty as charged. I can’t deny it. I might as well deny the rise and fall of the tide. I like to think my bitching and complaining is the last line of defense; the thing that keeps my blood pressure from spiking to the point of literally blasting off the top of my head. Sure, it never actually changes anything, but it makes me feel better. As I wrote in closing last night, blogging is my safety valve, letting me vent the day’s anger, hostility, and frustration into something like an appropriate channel, or if not strictly appropriate, maybe at least shunting it off into a space where it doesn’t do any lasting damage.

I’ve lived in my head a long time now and if there’s anything I’ve come to know about how I work, it’s that the ranting and raving aren’t the trouble. The real problems come in sullen silence on the days when I don’t say anything all. Those are my worst days – the ones where everything is roiling below the surface. Those days are the hard ones to get through with some semblance of sanity intact.

Today, the sun is up again, the week has careened past its zenith, and mercifully the weekend is coming on a day early. That’s a far cry from saying all is right with the world, but for the time being at least my particular black dog is back on its leash. Don’t worry though, there are still plenty of things that have annoyed me this week, so we’re well on track for tomorrow’s post… because it wouldn’t be Thursday if I didn’t bitch about at least three things.

The more things change…

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I’m afraid we’re screeching back into one of those times when I’m going to spend far too much time casting around for new blog ideas. In this case, the problem isn’t any kind of block, but rather that everything I really want to write about is embargoed or otherwise of a nature that I consider it out of bounds for this forum. It really is a pity, because I know there are some real doozies that are sitting in my notes just wasting away. Sure, maybe they’ll see the light of day sometime in the future when they’re less relevant, but there’s no denying that takes the edge off them.

If you’ve read The Cynic’s Guide, you’ve already read most of this story. God knows I’ve already lived it. The best I can tell you is that the past is a pretty damned good indicator of what the future is going to be like. It’s 100% situation normal in the belly of the bureaucracy… and that’s a uniquely off combination of comforting and infuriating. If nothing else, I know what to expect. I’ve been here before after all. The names and faces are different, the scenery has changed, but it’s the same old, tired story. The more things change, the more they never do… at least this round of eye rolling is on the banks of Mother Chesapeake instead of Big Muddy.

Things unsaid…

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The single hardest thing I do around here is try desperately to keep my big mouth from writing checks that the rest of me isn’t quite ready to pay for. It goes against my nature as a blogger to censor myself when every bit of my ego, pride, and desire for page views tells me that I could write a scorcher. But no, that little voice inside my head that preaches moderation and self preservation is demanding a hearing… and reminding me that from time to time, opening my mouth and letting words fly out might have a tendency towards shifting my career dissipation light into overdrive and leaving it there until it blows the engine apart. It seems the better part of valor this evening is to keep my powder dry for use when it might be of more practical application.

Connection…

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I think I’ve made a connection. Maybe it’s just in my own head as a I struggle this Sunday morning to figure out what to write about, but I have a sinking feeling that my snap assessment is right. While I’m sitting here at the kitchen table with piping hot coffee, two dogs snoring, and the soft hum of the morning news yammering in my ear, it occurs to me that my posts are more interesting when I’ve been forced to deal with stupid people. That’s what spurs the best rants out of my head. After two blissful days of not leaving the house, I’m beginning to wonder if I might not need those interactions to keep things fresh. They give me perspective, because nothing seems so bad, wrong, or stupid as it does when it’s happening right in front of you. Is it possible that I need to be out there if for no other reason than to find new material like so much grist for the mill?

If it’s true, I should go out today and immerse myself in watching people. I should seek avenues to maximize that connection in service to the blog. I should do a lot of things, though. For now, I think I’ll just enjoy the balance of my extra long, long weekend and not force the issue. There will be plenty enough time and cause to be out in the world dealing with people when I can’t otherwise avoid it… because really, if that’s the price of keeping this blog fresh and interesting, I think I’d rather just bore you to tears.

Anniversary…

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Yes, yes, I know It’s Thursday and Thursday means What Annoys Jeff this Week. As long as I have an internet connection and a bit of power in one of my iDevices, I’ll get that post up at some point later today. Just now, while I’m sitting here watching the snow turn big_15to sleet turn to rain turn back to snow, I’m taking a moment to wish myself a happy 4th anniversary on WordPress.

I can’t say it’s always been perfectly smooth sailing, but WordPress has genuinely provided a great home for jeffreytharp.com. With 30,212 views, 410 comments, it’s been everything a small blogger who spends his day writing about whatever wild-assed idea crosses his mind could ask for. I can’t say for sure whether I’ll be here in another four years, but consulting my magic 8-ball, I’d have to imagine that signs point to yes. I’m not the kind of guy to tinker with something that works and this joint is filling my need to offer the world my opinion very nicely.

Now if the internet is any guide, I should run out and get myself the gift of fruit or flowers or maybe a new appliance. The internet is a strange place.

Two days off…

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Some of you may have noticed that I played hooky for two days this weeks, leaving the ivy covered halls of jeffreytharp.com without new posts on both Friday and Saturday. It wasn’t quite intentional, but I don’t exactly feel guilty about it either. Trust me when I say that posting seven days a week – through vacations, holidays, illness, and any number of other distractors – is a brutal pace. Don’t take that as a 538px-Concussion_mechanics.svgcomplaint, though. Given unlimited time and no requirement to feed myself, maintain an income-generating job, and keep up with the occasional outside interest, there’s not many things I would rather do than sit here tapping on the keys. So yeah, sometimes I’m just going to let it rest for a day or two

I think what’s happening is that I’m slowly trying to work my way into a new schedule – probably a slightly less intense six day a week kind of deal. Fridays are currently the front runner for my “day off.” That’s mostly because by the time I wade through a work week and make it to Friday, my brain has turned to some kind of viscous jell that can’t manage much in the way of coherent thought. I figure if one of the treatments for concussion is strict rest and minimizing activities that require extreme concentration, giving the old brain box a day off is probably a good idea. After all, five days in the office certainly feels like being beaten about the head and neck with a blunt object, so the treatment and recovery process should be more or less the same, no?

2013 in review

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 11,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

The new Sunday…

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I had planned on today being the first new post on archive-free Sunday. I guess it’s still the first post, but since I woke up with a sore throat, some kind of strange hacking cough, and zero motivation, I’ll go ahead and say you might find this post a little lacking in the usual level of effort that goes into them. In fact, my first preference at the moment is to tell the internet to bugger, find a blanket to wrap myself in, and spend the morning holding down the couch. Still, since blogs don’t write themselves, here I am banging away at the keyboard since that’s what I’ve done every Sunday morning for as long as I can remember.

The truth is, I still don’t know what’s going to fill this early Sunday time slot – a weekly political rant, a review of some product I fell in love with during the week, the overflow material from What Annoys Jeff this Week. I have no idea. Maybe I need to stop looking for a theme and just go back to my roots, writing about whatever happens to pop into my head when I log in. For the time being, the “whatever pops into my head” option seems the most likely way ahead. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it doesn’t close the door on a recurring topic emerging later… and let me tell you, right now quick and easy sounds just about perfect.

That’s that…

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Well, the last post from the old MySpace blog went live here on WordPress earlier this morning. I guess that’s that. It’s been such a part of the Sunday morning routine for me that it feels a little strange now that it’s finished. Don’t get me wrong, though, I am extraordinarily happy to finally have the “collected works” all under one roof for the first time. I like knowing that if I get hit by a bus on the way to the office tomorrow, at least this one small bit of me will endure in electronic form for as long as there is an internet. Let’s not get into too deep a discussion that this is what I’ve chosen to leave as my eternal legacy to the world. Sure, it’s no cure for cancer, but as an historian, there’s nothing we like more than day to day commentary about how things were in the olden days… so, blogging is a public service (for a public that hasn’t been born yet).

I don’t have any really solid idea about how the statistics add up but a quick guesstimate would be that I’ve posted something in excess of 300,000 words and garnered something like 60,000 visitors between MySpace, Blogger, and finally here at WordPress. Those visitors have had the chance to read 1,518 individual posts between June 2006 and December 2013. Yep, if you’re doing the math at home, that’s seven and a half years of blogging, and I feel like I’m really just starting to hit my stride.

If you’d like to stop by the archive for one last look around and to see the last four posts from the days of MySpace, here’s the inevitable link to October 2008. The transition from MySpace to Blogger was relatively seamless, so you’ll have to scroll down a bit to start on October 19th. Be sure to check back next week to see what the “new” Sunday mornings look like.

Penultimate…

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Welcome, ladies and gentlemen to the penultimate post from the MySpace archives. This week I present for your reading pleasure the final post from September 2008 and the first four posts from October 2008. As usual, they cover the range from my initial thoughts on the burgeoning financial crisis that was so new back then, reports on construction at the Memphis house, and the stuporous aftermath of a fall wedding reception.

There might not be any of the rants you’ve come to know and love in this batch, but I think they hold up surprisingly well – particularly the early though exercise about the coverage and causes of the Great Recession. The posts from October are going to bleed together slightly. There is a brief overlap of posts I wrote to test out Blogger while continuing to post on MySpace, so a bit of overlap was unavoidable when I merged posts. For this week’s update, you’ll need to scroll to the bottom of October’s page after you hit the link. That should take you to the current update.

With just four posts to go, the long effort to bring all my blogly goodness under one roof is almost complete. Next week you can look forward to the final four (and of course my running commentary on how we got from Point A to Point B).