Tag Archives: brain

Just a theory…

Posted on by

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 giant case of meh…

Posted on by

A giant case me “meh” is what I’ve had all day for some reason. No motivation to do a damned thing. Don’t want to write, or read, or talk, or watch TV, or cook, or clean, or really do anything that my seemingly addled mind could come up with. So here I’ve sat, pinging from thing to thing without Red Stripetaking an interest in any of it. For the record, it’s not going to make my list of recommended things to do on a Saturday. Eventually, even though I still don’t really want to write, I turned up here because in the end that’s always what I do. I write, I rage, I rant, and hopefully when I finish my brain is clear of whatever cloud has descended on it. If that doesn’t work, there’s always cold Red Stripe in the fridge. That doesn’t so much clear the cloud cover as make me less apt to care about it being there in the first place. Sometimes, that’s every bit as good as finding an actual solution. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to pillage the fridge. Hooray Beer!

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Being the “dumb guy” in the room. I’ve met enough brilliant minds to know mine isn’t one of them. I’ve made my peace with that. I’m satisfied with having a respectable amount of general knowledge in many areas and a deep knowledge of a few threads of the arts and humanities. It’s my niche. But every once in a while you walk into a room, spend nine hours listening attentively and walk away realizing that you don’t have a damned clue what anyone was talking about. On those days the best you can manage is to smile, try to nod at what feel like appropriate intervals, and pray that no one asks you any questions. Days like that suck.

2. Being a piñata. We all have plans – a basic script by which we’re expecting to live our lives. For most of my working life, my plan included working 40 hours a week. With the arrival of sequester and furlough I made my peace with the new plan being 32 hours a week and adjusted accordingly. Now that furlough is ending, I’ll again adjust Artesian Logoaccordingly – insecure in the knowledge that “next year is going to be worse” hanging over my head. If there’s anything I hate it’s being jerked from pillar to post repeatedly like some kind of half-assed piñata.

3. Artesian Water Company. Nothing quite like getting a email from your overseas landlord wondering why he’s getting a notice that the water company is about to discontinue service. When I called Artesian to calmly ask WTF, the customer service representative cheerfully told me that the account was two months past due. Oh really? Not according to my account of statements and bills paid. But hey, I think I may have uncovered a slight problem with their doucheconoe business process that says bills can only go to the registered property owner instead of the guy actually living in the house and paying the bill. Asshats.

Focus…

Posted on by

I’ve been having one of those days where it has been impossible to focus on anything for more than a minute or two at a clip. I wish I could blame it on some kind of external distraction, but I can’t. It’s all my own brain jumping from one thing to the next without any apparent rhyme or reason. It’s bad enough sitting here at the kitchen table trying to get through a blog post. It was downright crippling sitting at my desk trying to exercise my renowned skills as a tab-wearing PowerPoint Ranger.

Everyone’s entitled to an “off” day now and then, but when you make your living with your brain instead of your hands, it’s a little disconcerting when you never quite manage to get things into focus. I’ve had days like this before and I’m sure I’ll have them again, but at the moment all I’m hoping to do is make it through New Friday to Saturday (Part 1) and see if maybe a weekend can get my head straightened out.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

Well, it seems like the question really answers itself at this point, doesn’t it? But since I know nobody is going to let me get away with a simple “it’s self explanatory,” here we go…

1. The common cold. We have machines that can scan the human brain. We can replace human heart valves with pork parts. We can perform knee replacement surgery on dogs. But do you know what we can’t do? We can’t cure the common goddamned cold. Are you effing serious? Through the miracle of modern science, the best we can do is dope someone up on decongestants, antihistamines, and nasal sprays so that they’re too stoned to care how bad they feel. WTF, science? What have you been doing for the last 400 years? I think it’s amazing that you can cure a disease that one person in 100 million will actually contract, but it would be even better if you could track down a cure for the thing that 5 billion of us will catch once or twice a year.

2. Daytime TV. After two and a half days of not doing much of anything besides sitting in front of the television, I can say with some authority that TV pretty much sucks between the hours of 8AM and 8PM. I’m sure there are some people out there watching, but I can’t understand why they would think there wasn’t something better to do with their time… like sleeping, or possibly gouging out their eyes with sharp sticks. I’m thanking the old gods and the new that we live in an age of Hulu and Apple TV.

3. Being “medicated.” I despise the feeling of being medicated – that feeling you get when you’re taking lots of meds that make your head feel like it’s full of cotton and not necessarily attached to your body. Maybe I’m not describing it right, but regardless, I don’t like it. I’m not a billionaire, I’m not an athlete, and I have no practical skills like welding to fall back on. My brain is what I’ve got going for me and what keeps me from living in an overpass-adjacent cardboard box. When it’s not firing at full speed, well, I’m sure it’s bad… I just can’t quite articulate why at the moment. Stupid brain.

Apparently I missed it…

Posted on by

Once upon a time a natural disaster couldn’t happen anywhere in the country and escape my notice. A wildfire in Southern California or a Missouri River flood were the high sign that the overtime spigot was about to be cranked wide open. Of course I’ve been out of that game for a while now… and while I don’t miss the late night calls to pack up and be ready to fly away on short notice, I definitely miss the OT.

More than that, I think I might actually miss what’s going on around me. Through a combination of watching Mad Men on demand and running some random sitcoms as background noise last night, listening to commercial-free online radio through AppleTV, and not checking in with the news sites before bed, I didn’t even know that the entire state of Oklahoma had apparently been wiped off the map until I cranked on Channel 13 for my morning dose of local news. That’s a tough confession to make for a guy who prides himself on having a pretty good grip on what’s happening in the world.

I’m not going to get drug into a philosophical discussion about it, but for good or ill, it seems that I’ve more or less stopped paying attention to the news. Maybe I just lost interest. Maybe I’ll come back around at some point, but just now, I’m surprisingly ok with being in the dark about things. Then again, maybe I’ve only got so much bandwidth to deal with news and current events and I’m just prioritizing what makes it through to my frontal lobe… apparently even my subconscious wants the world to stay off my proverbial lawn.