Tag Archives: blog

Zero point zero…

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Let me be among the very first to say I can admit bad decisions when I make them. My idea to kick off an August AMA was met with a resounding silence zero point zero.jpgfollowed by the distant womp womp of a sad trombone. Level of interest: Zero point zero. That’s ok. The sheer volumes of topics around here that never get past the idea stage is staggering so it’s just one more aborted notion on the pile.

Of course if there’s no one out there feeding me ideas, that means I’m back to relying on my own devices. After compiling a couple of thousand posts, I guess you can say that I’m ok with that. It’s not exactly a new thing. I’m just going to proceed from the assumption in this case that silence implies consent and that I should continue doing what I’m doing.

So, you may be asking, what does that mean? Well, it means you’ll be sure to see more stupid things that happened at the office, a bit of commentary about the news of the day, and whatever else happens to catch my interest in the moment. After so many posts I’m finding it’s nearly impossible not to tread some of the same ground, but I’m finding it entertaining to look at how my thinking has evolved over time. All things considered it’s not a bad way to run a joint.

What’s on your mind?

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About once a year, but on no actual specific schedule I like to throw open the doors here at jeffreytharp.com and let you tell me what’s on your mind. No, I’m not asking you to click, or share, or forward to 10 friends to prevent the ghost in the machine from deleting all your porn links, but I am offering up the chance for each and every one of you to set the agenda for a little while. I usually do this kind of thing when it feels like my own topics are getting a little stale and it’s safe to say looking back over the last few months’ worth of posts, I get the distinct impression that the day job is getting way too much time inside my head. Thanks to the power of social media and the vast reach of this blog (you know, 20-60 people per day), I’ve got a chance to set out of my head for a little while and stretch my legs – or more aptly, my fingers.

So, you may be asking yourself, what are the ground rules? There really aren’t any. Want to know my thoughts on a topic I haven’t talked about? Ask. Want a deeper dive on something I’ve only tangentially touched upon? Let me know. Want to hear more about dogs and less about work? Tell me. Have an unanswered question about that one time I did “this” when I clearly should have done “that?” It’s your chance to get the straight dope from the horse’s mouth… or horse’s ass, I suppose, depending on your particular point of view.

Now for the fine print: While I will provide an answer to every question asked, I do reserve the right to “vague up” some details that could be incriminating for me or embarrassing for others. I will, however, provide the straight dope answer directly to the questioner in these cases. All questions will be answered in the order in which they were received, or the order in which I feel like answering them. Scheduling really depends on the day. I will lead off each AMA response by crediting the asker, by name, link to their blog, twitter, etc as appropriate unless they have requested to ask anonymously.

So now, it’s all up to you. What’s on your mind?

The hidden posts…

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As happens from time to time the blog post that you should be reading tonight is officially embargoed. It’s written, saved to WordPress, and then intentionally published privately. I do this occasionally because the writing itself is cathartic and it helps me more clearly understand my own mind. That, however, doesn’t mean the words that make it to the page are in any way ready for public consumption. They may never be – or more precisely, I may never be willing to share them with you. It’s nothing personal, I promise.

For the vast amount of information I’ve been willing to share across the electronic world over the last couple of thousand posts, there are some few things I’m sure will just belong to me. I almost wish that wasn’t the case because many of those are the most impassioned, wide ranging, celebratory, hopelessly melancholy bits of writing I’ve done. They’re almost always the most raw and least edited.

Maybe someday I’ll sneak these hidden posts out into the wild where they can fall in to the larger sweep of whatever else happened to be going on in my head at any given time. For now, just know that there are hidden gems lurking here in the ether. If you’re lucky (and I’m brave) you might just happen to see a few of them some day.

Diminishing bubble of concern…

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​I started writing this post three times already. Each one of the three things that came pouring from my fingertips made it to about two sentences in length before I realized that they were all topics that more appropriately belonged in an edition of What Annoys Jeff this Week. Being the good and disciplined writer I am, I copied and pasted them over into that file awaiting the right moment for them to come out into the light of day.

I could tell you that I have a massive backlog of ideas here, but the reality is I’m sitting on a stockpile of thoughts that’s rapidly approaching zero. I can only assume that’s because I’m paying increasingly less attention to “the world” over time. I’m sick to death of Trump is a shitshow, Democrats are all socialists, keeping track of who OD’ed, and so on ad infinitum.

Maybe I should care more, but the fact is I just don’t. I know my own reality. The one where I grew up, studied hard, went to work and now have grown ass responsibilities to be concerned about. Maybe that makes me not sympathetic enough. Whatever. I have my own garden to tend and my own troubles. If more people grabbed their own personal bull by the horns, I’ve always reckoned there would be a lot fewer problems left for society in general to sort out on their behalf.

Yeah, I’d probably have more things to write about if my heart were the bleeding kind, but as it is, all I really want to do is keep the house looking nice, play with the animals, and read a good book. Making sure those things can continue to happen on a consistent basis is just about as far as my bubble of concern extends at this point.

Eight years of WordPress…

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Sometimes I forget just how long I’ve been blogging. Then the internet jumps up and gives me its standard shocking reminder. Look, my blog has been around long enough to have once called MySpace home, so I’m well aware that I’ve been rambling for a long, long time now. That fact that WordPress has been home now for eight years, though, somehow feels more shocking than the fact that it use to live at a url that ended in myspace.com/blog.

I like it here. It feels comfortable. The longer I do this, the more I appreciate simplicity and ease of use in a website. The point all along, I suppose, has been to learn what I can about being a better writer rather than learning how to run a website. The later would probably have been a far more lucrative endeavor, but I still find the former much more fun.

There’s something deeply satisfying about barfing up what’s usually the worst of the day onto the page and hitting publish. It’s my 21st century equivalent of applying leeches and purging myself of bad humors. The two or three hundred words that end up here on the typical day let me purge off the most obnoxious and annoying bits of the day and settle in with the good stuff. If I weren’t blogging it, I’d just end up having to find another way to get the mess out of my head.

So, I’m celebrating eight years with WordPress. In all likelihood it will go unremarked and unnoticed, but it really does mean the world to me.

Serenity Now!

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B7f2LH0CIAAZOm9.jpgI can’t write the post I want to write tonight. Actually I can. What I mean is I shouldn’t write the post I desperately want to write tonight. My self preservation instinct is still strong enough to know what should be here in black and white and what should live on only in my head (for the time being).

It’s a story of time management and meetings and leadership and priorities and the difference between won’t and can’t. It’s the kind of post that would go like gangbusters on this blog, but that the tenor of the times demands I leave unpublished. It’s heartbreaking to leave good material just sitting on the shelf, but there’s a limit to how much truth power is interested in hearing.

If anyone needs me I’ll be over here ranting and raving at the dogs. At least they get me.

Serenity Now!

The spamming of WordPress…

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I’ve been using WordPress as my blog platform since 2010. It’s been a good, feature-rich home that is about as straightforward to use as anyone could reasonably expect. There have been a few hiccups along the way, but overall it’s the kind of happy technology that just works and lets itself fade into the background so you can focus on content instead of the nuts and bolts of how the website itself functions. I’m just not geek enough anymore to be particularly interested in that side of running things.

The last couple of weeks, though, I’ve found myself inundated by an unexpected and unprecedented amount of spam message traffic making its way past the WordPress filters. Each and every post on jeffreytharp.com seems to generated a responding barrage of dozens of likes and follows from click bait sites filled with brilliant marketing strategies and tips for monetizing your page. For the purposes of my writing here, each and every one of them is both pointless and annoying – spam messages in their most pure form.

Until now, the filters provided by WordPress were sufficient to hold this onslaught of wasted electrons at bay. Since that is true no longer, I’m trying to manually enforce some kind of discipline on what makes it through to my inbox. That being the case, I’ve had to impose rather draconian restrictions on what notifications I’m receiving from WordPress. The free and easy days of letting everything flow through to my inbox and sorting through one or two messages a day seem to be over.

So look, if you are trying to reach me through the blog for some reason, chances are I haven’t seen your message. Feel free to leave a comment, though, because for the moment I am seeing those notifications without undue amounts of spam getting in the way. It feels like there should be a better way to manage this sort of thing but it’s the best I was able to implement on short notice. Frankly, though, any option that stops the flow of this junk to my inbox is more than welcome so I don’t see any major changes in the foreseeable future.

The Year in Review: 2017 Edition

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Screen Shot 2017-12-31 at 9.55.36 AM.png WordPress use to helpfully provide a year in review feature that would auto-magically spit out a post with all the facts and figures about what posts were popular, where your views were coming from, and all manner of information about what your readers found interesting. Sadly, they discontinued that feature a couple of years ago, so it’s up to me to come up with something to say here at the end of the year.

In plain language, this year was almost exactly average with about 6,600 views and 3,684 visitors. Some years have been better, some worse, and I guess that’s about all we can reasonably expect to say about blogging – or life for that matter.

The most viewed post of the year wasn’t even a post from this year. Instead, you have to reach back all the way to 2014 find the post titled For Official Use Only. Some people would mind that, but me, I’m not picky about where people are looking so long as they’re looking. In case you’re wondering, you had to drop all the way down to the third most viewed post to find one written in 2017. You probably won’t be shocked to find out it’s about people making bad decisions and the rest of us poor sods who have to listen to them talk about it.

In related news, it’s also the first year that “hot lesbian cheerleader” didn’t lead the ranking of search terms that brought people here. I’m not sure if that says more about what people are searching for or the content I’ve been posting this year… so make of that what you will.

I won’t even speculate what 2018 holds for the world. Assuming the new year is about the same as the old, it’ll be about equal parts joy and terror, with a heavy dose of “what the actual fuck” thrown in for good measure. The only thing I’m reasonably sure about is that as long as I have an internet connection and and a few thoughts that I can’t stand keeping to myself, I’ll be here writing them down and sharing them with the world. That too could be good or bad, depending on your perspective. Since it seems to help preserve my sanity, I’m going with the idea that remains a net good overall.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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If you’re clicking over to jeffreytharp.com and it’s Thursday, there’s a better than average chance that you’re looking for What Annoys Jeff this Week. It’s the only weekly feature I offer here and it remains almost without exception my high water mark for readers each and every week. If you’re here to read the next installment of the top three major or minor annoyances this week, though, I’m afraid I’m about to disappoint you. That’s because I’m going to use the platform this afternoon to go down a much more self-congratulatory path… I think.

If you look closely at the web address up at the top of the page you’ll see that it’s showing WAJTW/301. For those not following along that means it’s the 301st time “What Annoys Jeff this Week” is being used as a title. Given the occasional missed Thursday (although there have been damned few of those) WAJTW has been showing up regularly here for six years. In that time there have been about 900 documented annoyances. I’m still trying to wrap my head around those numbers. Even I have to admit that’s more grievances than I expected… and I’m the one who took the time to write them all out. I refuse to even do the math on how much time got poured into that (but it rhymes with funhundred and fifty hours and that assumes it only took 30 minutes to bang out each post).

So, what do you do when you realize you’ve spent an inordinate amount of time cataloging and bitching about the myriad things that have agitated you over the last six years? Since it’s the start of a long weekend, you mostly shrug your shoulders, order up a pizza, and wonder what jackassery the world is going to throw at you over the next six years. Say what you will about my chosen theme, but if you trade in people who do stupid things and what pisses you off, the well is just about bottomless. In my own utterly jaded way, I’m actually thankful for that.

Ten plus six…

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Before writing tonight’s post I went back and read over the the ones I wrote before. Some of them are pretty good. Some of them are angry. Some are sad. Most are a little bit of both. Honestly I always get a little choked up looking at these posts about an all important date that with each turning of the calendar recedes just a little further in our national collective memory. At best, September 11th is always a date I find filled with melancholy.

Ten years ago, I happened to be in DC in a work trip. I was busy and not really paying attention to the calendar when the day started. By the end of it, though, I’d spent the day dwelling on heroes who fought against and subdued the worst impulses of their own generation.

While thinking of Sir Winston, I wrote:

I went to see Lincoln tonight. It just seemed fitting somehow. But the words that stuck in my head weren’t those written to bind up our nation’s wounds. They’re still too fresh for that. All along my long walk tonight, I was recalling Churchill’s words from the frosted depths of the Cold War… “We have surmounted all the perils and endured all the agonies of the past. We shall provide against and thus prevail over the dangers and problems of the future, withhold no sacrifice, grudge no toil, seek no sordid gain, fear no foe. All will be well. We have, I believe, within us the life-strength and guiding light by which the tormented world around us may find the harbour of safety, after a storm-beaten voyage.”

Winston would have understood the 21st Century. Sure, we have different clothes and different music, but it’s the same old world. He’d tell us to never give in and to stay the course. He knew that the only way to defeat evil was to pummel it into unquestioned submission. Winston would have understood.

Churchill, of course, is best known for his leadership during World War II, but the charming thing about him is that he seems to have a quote for all purposes. Some are inspirational. Others are dry with humor. The very best are usually both at the same time. The ones I find myself thinking about most often, though, are the ones that call us to persevere in the face of adversity, against the longest of odds.

It’s September 11th again. So much has changed and so much is still exactly the same. I still think Winston would understand our modern world, perhaps even better than do those of us who are living in it. Sometimes I get the distinct impression that we don’t understand a damned thing.

You can read the full post from September 11, 2007 here: https://jeffreytharp.com/2007/09/11/requiem/