Tag Archives: routine

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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Sure it might be a touch unseemly to throw together a post about the week’s annoyances the day after Christmas, but it’s Thursday and that’s just how I roll. Since I value consistency above almost all other things, not posting today would be pretty damned hypocritical of me. Of all the things you can call me, I’d like to at least avoid that one. With that said, here’s the final installment of WAJTW for 2013:

1. Reaching halfway. Realizing that you’ve reached the halfway point of your vacation sucks. Knowing that from here on out every new day brings you one sunrise closer to the drudgery of the workweek hangs as an unfortunate reminder over the time you have left to do what you will. Sure, it’s not a march to the gallows, but it’s still uniquely unpleasant in its own way.

2. Expectations. Since I know a little something about logistics, reading articles about how major delivery services like UPS and FedEx “screwed up” the holidays is always vaguely amusing. I’m pretty sure what people mean is that they didn’t order some key critical piece of Christmas swag until late in the day on December 23rd and then expect the shipping company to temporarily rescind the laws of physics in order to deliver this precious package “on time.” I know the sheer level of effort and mountain of technology that goes into moving a cardboard box from one side of the continent to another, but I’m not saying the transportation outfits are blameless. Still, I have to think if Mr. and Mrs. Christmas Shopper bothered to order even a day or two earlier, they could have saved themselves some angst. Then again, expecting a touch of personal responsibility at this festive time of year is probably a bridge too far.

3. Sitting around. I’m not a social butterfly by any stretch of the imagination. Still, somehow I manage to keep myself busy from morning until night most of the time. At the moment, I’m beginning to feel like I’ve radically under-planned this Christmas vacation. Once you’ve gotten accustomed from long years of practice to running your own show, calling your own shots, and dealing with life’s daily ephemera, there’s something vaguely unsettling about sitting around with nothing planned, nothing that needs immediate attention, and nothing that’s even close to routine.

The Routine…

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Hard experience, training, and too many years working a job that involved thinking about all the boogymen out to get us have left me with a decidedly pessimistic streak. That’s probably why long stretches of good things happening tend to make me edgy – or rather they make me edgy when I’m paying attention and not letting myself be hijacked into some kind of irrational exuberance. It doesn’t happen often these days, but from time to time I still let blind optimism drive the train. Historically, those are the moments when I get an abrupt reminder from the universe that it’s patently ridiculous to expect the future to be much more than an extension of the past.

It’s an angst filled lesson. Every. Single. Time.

I’m always a guy with a plan, even though like most plans, mine rarely survive first contact with the enemy. Fortunately, when The Plan slides off the rails, my system defaults back to The Routine – those things that happen week in, week out, day after day, that keep me focused, keep me busy, and keep me from dwelling too much on issues where I clearly don’t have any influence. So yeah, today is going to be about slipping comfortably, quietly back into The Routine, because pondering limitations of The Plan isn’t getting me anywhere.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Too quiet. I’m generally a guy who appreciates his peace and quiet. Except when that quiet comes in the form of one of the meeting rooms I occasionally get stuck in. It’s not technically an anechoic chamber, but it’s awfully close. The small battery powered clock on the wall ticks with the sound of thunder and you can definitely hear the sound of the blood pumping through your ears when you’re the only one in there. As much as I appreciate a nice quiet workplace, apparently being surrounded by sound deadening material is my bridge too far. Surprisingly, even for me, there is such a thing as too quiet. Who knew?

2. Every Saturday. I get groceries every Saturday morning. It’s as ingrained into The Routine as brewing a pot of coffee first thing in the morning. Apparently a lot of other people also do their shopping on Saturday mornings too… which is why I don’t understand why every Saturday feels like I’m surrounded by people who are experiencing the grocery store for the first time. I don’t get the people walking around in awe of the abundance before them or the ones who don’t seem to have any earthly idea why they’re there or what they’re supposed to load into their cart to take home. Can we at least try to have a list, a plan, and not spend half the damned day wandering around as if the pasta aisle was the latest Magic Kingdom attraction?

3. Bank of America. Bank of America gets featured here a lot, but I actually tried hard to like them. Their online banking system is second to none and they had branches and ATMs just about everywhere I’d ever want to be. Their website is still top notch in my opinion, but over the last two months, I’ve watched their local ATMs practically drop off the face of the earth. I went from having four of them spread out along my daily commute path to having none. There’s still a branch office open locally, but not in a location that’s convenient to any of my normal travels… and it’s safe to assume I won’t be making any special trips just for the privilege of being a Bank of America customer. Sure, I’ll keep an account open with them in case I ever needed it, but I’m pointing my direct deposit and bill pay to one of the local credit unions. I really did like their big bank feel, but not enough to get stuck paying $5 in fees every time I wanted a few twenty dollar bills. There are just too many other, cheaper options to stick around for that kind of asshattery.

For the cure…

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It’s Saturday. I was finishing up the mad dash around southern Cecil County that included trying to get get gas, get to the bank, stop at the vet for bulldog meds, get what’s probably the last of the summer fruit from the roadside stand, stop at Petco for dog food, hit Walmart for people food, and then get back to the house before noon. I’m a man with a plan… and a schedule. Usually that schedule runs like a well built Swiss watch and it would have today, too, if the picture postcard town of North East hadn’t been overrun by people wandering in and out of traffic on the one street in and out of town. With every minute that these asswagons plod around, I have frozen stuff turning into thawed stuff… and that doesn’t make me a particularly happy traveler.

With every car length I inched down Main Street, my usually sunny disposition degenerated further into a seething rage. I mean here I am trying to be productive and get shit done and there’s a town full of people wandering around like they don’t have a single thing to do or a care in the world. People like that make me crazy, or maybe I should say they make me more crazy than the run of the mill people you can’t avoid on a daily basis.

After ten minutes of swearing a blue streak at everyone who had the audacity to cut between me and the car whose bumper I was riding, I felt vaguely bad about driving past the Race for the Cure “finish line” set up at the far end of town. I’m sure all of these people are perfectly nice and they’re trying to do a good thing, but it seems to me that they could have managed to plan a route somewhere that didn’t tie up traffic coming into and out of town in every possible direction. Today I got to see a whole lot of people with a whole lot of heart, but there’s not a jack one of them that knows a damned thing about logistics or route planning. Clearly, I’ve gotten past the part of the day where I felt bad yelling at them.

185 emails…

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There’s nothing quite as effective as 185 emails in your inbox to drag you back to reality. Three hours later, at least it’s a relief to know that 10% of them were discussing printer and network-related outages, 80% of them were crap you have no actual interest in, 5% were email from friends, and the remaining 5% are issues you actually need to do something about. It’s possible that I might have sat down and cried if there were actually 185 issues that needed my attention this morning. Even though I was physically present today, clearly my brain is still dragging in from somewhere on the Eastern Shore. Unless something ridiculous happens, it should be a day or two yet before the post-vacation afterglow wears off. I’d like to think that it could last until the 4-day Independence Day weekend, but I think we all know that’s more of a pipe dream than a plan.

Aside from the usual complaints about being back in the saddle, the routine is the routine. That’s probably good and bad. It’s comforting because it’s normal, but it still leaves me with a slightly sick feeling that it’s not what I really want to be doing with the day. Reality. 185 emails. Being a responsible adult is a real bitch.

Consider yourself pestered…

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So the experts on how to do thing online seem to all be telling me that I should be pestering you at least once a day about buying a copy of the book. Cajoling your friends into giving you $2 at every opportunity strikes me as a little unseemly, though. I’ll try to limit the direct self promotion, at least here in the blog, to no more than once a week. With that being said, please consider yourself pestered about the high quality book that I have available for sale from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords. With that out of the way, we can get on to other topics and all feel better about ourselves.

With that, we’ve reached the point in the weekend where I find I have nothing really to discuss. Saturday is, as it often is with me, a function of routine. Trash went to the dump, I filled up the gas tank, I wanted to burn Walmart to the ground, and I looked around outside and realized that I’m going to have to start cutting grass sooner rather than later. Dull by most standards, I’m sure. I’ll get some laundry done, hopefully find enough muse to write a blog post and a few hundred words on another project. Again, nothing earth shaking. It’s been my experience that earth shaking isn’t everything is made up to be. Give me quiet, calm, and predictable any day of the week.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Unpredictability. Know what? I’m a creature of habit. I like it that way. I take great comfort that things are going to happen at a regular time, in their regular way, and go more or less like clockwork. Most of you have never experienced my Saturday routine, but if you’re a fan of the German railroads, you’d love it, because if nothing else, I keep life running on time. The foreseeable future, including my personal budget, work schedule, and general attitude is going to be highly unpredictable and mostly beyond my control. We spend our lives dancing to a tune someone else calls, but at least most of the time we have the illusion of charting our own course. These are unpredictable times and that annoys me to no end.

2. Market research. One of the great pains in the ass when it comes to electronic publishing has been doing the market research on the competition. This is especially true as I’ve started really digging through the “management and leadership” section at Amazon. As far as I can tell, everyone over there seems to think the secret to work can be distilled into “5 Rules” or “21 Steps” or be based on releasing your inner office ninja. Aside from Scott Adams and Dilbert, mine might actually be the only voice of sanity in this world gone mad.

3. Unknown callers. Look, if you’ve called the phone number that I’ve had since sometime in 2003, leave a message for someone named Christy regarding buying a new car, and I don’t call back, the solution isn’t to then call three times a day for the next two weeks. I know the simple solution is just to answer, take a few minutes, and explain that you’ve gotten something completely jacked up, but the more passive aggressive option is to go ahead and let you continue to waste time calling someone who will never, ever answer.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Comcast. Making the list for the third or fourth time this year is the cable company that everyone loves to hate. Ever since I downgraded my service a two months ago, my bills have been arriving with what I’ll generously call wild inaccuracies. I spent 30 minutes yesterday on the phone with a very nice CSR who thought she was going to be able to make this month’s round of corrections. Except, of course, she couldn’t because the amount of the correction was in excess of $25… which triggered the need to execute what I believe she called an “elevation form for tier two service.” Instead of being transferred to this group of genies, I’d have to “stand by for them to contact me sometime within the next five business days.” I don’t know why I ever hold out hope that anything can either A) just work the way it’s supposed to work or B) Be corrected with a single phone call. Clearly my expectations are misaligned with reality.

2. The five day work week. I’m out of practice with being at my desk for a full five days in a row. I know this because it’s Thursday and the only ambition I have left is to muddle through tomorrow and get to the weekend. It’s not that the week has been particularly busy, problematic, or strange… but the trek from Monday to Friday has just seemed to go on forever. Now if I can just gin up enough oomph to drag myself through three more long weeks, I’ll be all set for the 11-day Christmas weekend.

3. Lunch. When I worked in DC, it was two blocks to Chinatown, one metro stop from Union Station and the Hill, or a 10 minute walk in almost any other direction to find a diverse and tasty array of lunch options. Here in Aberdeen, there’s a Subway, a Burger King, and a few other lunch places that more or less serve the same thing. While I don’t miss the daily 90 minute commute, I desperately miss having some variety in my lunch options. I miss General Tso’s from Tony Chang’s, burgers at the District Chophouse, and deep dish from Armand’s. At this point, God help me, I even have fond memories of the build your own salad bar next door to the office and the hot dog cart set up on the curb. I’m not expecting an urban food environment here in the wilds of north eastern Maryland, but if I don’t find something other than sandwiches soon I may have to resort to bringing my own food… and that’s just not an option I want to entertain.

The new routine…

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We all know I’m a creature of habit and it’s safe to say that having an invalid dog has generated quite a few changes to a schedule that had been popping along happily for the last fifteen months. After three days, I think we finally hit on a new routine that might be manageable, especially tomorrow with me going back to work. The killer is that the two dogs have to be separated to do everything that they use to do together… eating, going out, hanging out in the living room, everything. The problem, of course, is that where feeding the dogs use to be a plural act, it’s now singular, in that I have to feed one dog, take them out, and crate them before repeating the process with the other. A twenty minute morning routine is now something closer to 45 minutes and creeps up towards an hour when it involves breaking out the ice packs. Of course I’ll keep doing it, knowing that the first two weeks of the healing process are the worst and it will get better over time. Even so, I’ll be much happier when I have a pair of dogs again instead of two dogs who just happen to be living in the same house. Until then it looks like I’ll be setting a 4AM alarm to get it done before heading to work. Yeah, tomorrow morning should be a real treat.

Repeating myself…

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This is my 709th post, not including the two years worth of material I lost when MySpace when the way of the dodo bird. After more than 700 posts, across six years, two blogging platforms, and in excess of 15,000 page views I worry sometimes that I’m repeating myself. Part of that stems from just not being all that creative and part of it is that as an adult productive member of society most of days tend to be pretty similar – which means I have a tendency to have the same experiences over and over again. I mean when you spend five days a week doing some variation of get up, drive to work, work, drive home, make dinner, go to bed there’s an upward limit of how many new experiences you’re going to have.

That of course is a little troublesome when you make your bones trying to write things that people will find interesting. Honestly, I never thought I’d still be blogging this far along. If I did, I would have been anal retentive enough to build some kind of index so I could try not to repeat myself too often. Since I didn’t do that and we’re too far along to start now, you’re just going to be stuck with whatever random idea happens to pop into my head on any given day… and when I repeat myself just smile and nod the same way you would when your great aunt Fanny tells you the same story for the 273rd time. I’ll do my best to self edit that sort of thing, but won’t make any promises. Since my routine isn’t apt to change any time in the near future, you’re pretty much stuck with it, so don’t go complaining now that you’ve been warned.