Tag Archives: decision

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Begging. Tonight’s the night when all you parents out there send your children mixed messages by encouraging them off to talk to strangers for candy. Fortunately the houses in my neighborhood are far enough apart that it’s not particularly lucrative bit of ground to cover, so there aren’t typically herds of children wandering around looking for a handout. It’s not so much that I mind the giving away of candy, but like the 4th of July, it’s one of those nights that threatens to send one or both of the dogs over the edge every time they hear the gate close or someone knocking on the door. Then again there’s the unmitigated glee when I open the door so parent and child are faced with a surly looking bald man with two barking dogs at his back… so at least there’s that.

2. Getting Close. Earlier this month it looked like jeffreytharp.com was well on its way to having its best month ever in terms of unique views. WordPress was regularly reporting daily views of 50 or 60 people. On October 3rd, the site posted its biggest single day. Since this past Sunday the number of views per day have plummeted for reasons I haven’t been able to identify just yet. At the rate they’re hitting now, I’ll be lucky to bring in 50 or 60 views this week. Alas, such are the vagaries of the internet. As October draws to a close, I’ll have to content myself with having the 2nd best month in the blog’s short history… and start worrying about how to keep November from ending up recorded as the 2nd worst.

3. Indecision. You can accuse me of a lot of things, but being indecisive is generally not one of them. Right, wrong, or otherwise, when confronted with possible courses of action I’ll pick one based on the best information I have available at the time and move out smartly. I’ll never claim to make the right decision all the time, but I’ll by God make one instead of just sitting around waiting for something to happen. Whether it’s where to have lunch or which program to throw over the side, I wish the populace at large would just stop pussyfooting around and figure out what they want to happen. Walking through life having other people’s bad decisions foist upon you is simply piss poor planning. As far as I’m concerned, any decision made on the spot is better than a great decision made ten minutes too late.

Darts and a blindfold…

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A few weeks ago it rained. It was a hard rain and the office operated the whole day under a policy of “liberal leave,” where people could use unscheduled leave without penalty. Now if fairness, this was allowed because a mile or two north of our waterfront paradise the snow was falling to beat the band… but still here at the office it was rainy day.

Fast forward to this morning. The roads throughout the area were covered and snow was falling from the sky at a respectable clip. Driving conditions, while not quite treacherous, was considerably less than ideal. Because the snow had started falling more or less at the same time people start showing up for work, the parking lots, sidewalks, and pretty much every flat surface was an ankle deep puddle of slush that no one had gotten around to treating yet. It would have made for an excellent opportunity to announce liberal leave or to cut the first hour or two off the work day. It would have gone a long way towards earning a little bit of employee good will in an environment where that’s in pretty damned short supply.

I’m sure there’s some kind of logic to how such decisions get made at echelons higher than reality… though based on almost two years of observation, I’m beginning to think the process includes darts and a blindfold.

Slightly chilled feet…

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The moving truck has come and gone. I’m sitting here in the living room with the iPad perched dangerously on one knee and the 18 inch television sitting on Rubermaid tub. The dogs are in a general state of confusion and there’s still the must have essentials that need to be jammed into the Tundra tomorrow night. I don’t want to say I had a moment of doubt sitting here, but it was sort of the “ah ha” moment when I realized that this is reality now and not some half baked scheme I’ve been working on for almost a year.

I know this is a great opportunity and other than the house, there’s really nothing holding me to Memphis. That’s what makes the decision easy. As much as I’m running away from a toxic job, I’m running towards the only place in the country I’ll every really think of as home. That’s really what makes the expense and general pain in the ass of moving worth while. Once I get on the road (and the property manager finds a renter) everything will crystalize and I’ll know I pulled the trigger at the right time instead of just feeling it.

With all my gear somewhere in transit, I’m ready for the departure part of this experience to be over so I can focus on the much more exciting arrival part of the program. Cross your fingers that there will be some nice dog friendly houses for rent waiting for me to take a look at on the other end. Getting away is all over but the official departure cemony. I’ll get that out of the way tomorrow and these chilly toes will be a thing of the past.