Tag Archives: time

Mad props…

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I’m going to level with you. I have no earthly idea how you people with a wife/husband and an assortment of kids get through your day. It’s Friday afternoon and I don’t mind telling you that I’m flat out exhausted by the week when it rolls to a close. I’m exhausted from the sheer volume of human interaction that it takes to get through the day. Being an introvert, every one of those interactions requires a tremendous amount of energy to fight my natural instinct towards keeping everything a nice respectable distance. You’re just going to have to take my word for it when I say it’s exhausting in its own right, which brings me back around to the point of this discussion.

I’m almost positive I’ve said this before, but my hat’s off to you guys out there who get home and then turn around and fill the night with soccer practice, dance rehearsal, tutoring, going to the mall, or whatever the case may be. How you keep up with it is quite simply beyond me. If I don’t have those 4-5 hours between work and sleep to block out the world and refocus, I’m told I have the disposition of an angry badger… and that’s not fun for anyone involved. I suppose we all do what whatever we have to based on the situation we’re in, but in this case the only thought I can offer is “better you than me.” Seriously. I have an deep, yet purely academic appreciation for what you do, but I’m so glad it’s not on my agenda that the English language doesn’t have an appropriate way to describe it. Keep up the good work.

Now if you’ll pardon me, it’s time for a glass of wine and a good book so I can marshal my energy for dealing with the world tomorrow morning.

June 4th…

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At just about this time last year I was standing in a house stacked literally to the ceiling with boxes, furniture, and the general ephemera of life. If I’m remembering correctly the first couple of days of June were some ridiculous combination of a sprint and a marathon. June 1st was a 900 mile drive. June 2nd was my first look at the rental house and signing the lease. On the 3rd I finally took possession of the house while the property manager was still (badly) trying to paint over a particularly hideous colored wall in the basement . On the 4th I checked in at the new job and watched as every shred of personal property I owned was hand carried into the house by a truck driver and his nephew from Arkansas. To say there was a lot going on might be a bit of an understatement. The things you can do when you’re fueled almost exclusively by coffee and adrenalin are simply amazing.

With that little trip down memory lane wrapped up, it begs the larger question – Where did the last year go? It feels like I just sat down for a minute and suddenly it’s June again. I vaguely remember a few cold days in there somewhere that must have been winter, or at least what passed for winter last year. I dimly recall raking leaves at a point that feels fairly recent, so I’m almost sure there was a fall in there somewhere, too. Honestly, though, most of it has been a blur.

Perspective is a funny thing. When I was a kid, the summer seems to stretch out forever into the distance. Now I’m half afraid I’ll wake up one morning and find snow on the ground and Christmas coming on fast. I’d love to slow up a little and take it all in, but I don’t dare take my hand off the throttle. I’m not sure I know who I am if I’m not going in three or four directions at once.

Rework…

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Interpreting policy memos, white papers, and more informal summaries are my bread and butter. I’ve got a bit of a knack for distilling ten pages of official-ese into a one or two paragraph overview. I may not be an expert on whatever topics are dropped in front of me, but I’ve cultivated a skill at seeing through extraneous bullshit and identifying what someone needs to know versus what’s actually written on the page. Sometimes that’s a skill that’s more trouble than it’s worth.

At 10:00 yesterday morning I was given a couple of dozen pages and told to gin up a two page summary by 3:00. No problem there. That’s plenty of time to get the job done and still manage a leisurely lunch. The real issue is boss who drops by at 2:45 to provide some helpful insight on the areas he wants to highlight. While that guidance might have been helpful at some point, it wasn’t particularly useful after spending four hours developing my own salient points.

So today, I’ll spend another three or four hours covering the same ground, but putting a slightly different spin on it. Any chance I had of feeling productive this week is officially dead.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Waiting. Some people, God bless them, are able to sit all day waiting on something to happen. Me? Not so much. Blame it on computerization, the Internet, youth or whatever else you blame such things on, but the bottom line is I’m not a patient person. When something is supposed to happen, I want it to happen right the hell now. Maybe that’s something I should work on, buti don’t think I have the patience for that.

2. Alarm clocks. On any given weekday morning, the alarm built into my phone goes off twice. I don’t remember the last time that work me up. About ten minutes later, my normal alarm clock sounds. That one might wake me half the time. The third and last line of defense is the rediculously loud alarm I picked up from Amazon. That one is still getting me up, but it’s taking longer and longer to get my attention. Another month or two and I’ll probably be immune to that end too. What I’d really like is an alarm that wakes me consistently without needing to set three or four different clocks. Sure, it seems like overkill, but it’s barely getting the job done. Surely there’s a better way.

3. Parking garages. This is America. We drive big vehicles here. Many of us have full sized cars, trucks, and SUV’s that are not only tall, but also wide. While I completely respect your efforts to cram as many parking spaces as possible into that fancy seven story garage you built, what I’m going to need you to do is widen up those spaces a bit so I don’t have to use two of them, every time I come visit or leave a big chunk of my vehicle hanging precipitously far into the travel lane. This is really something that I shouldn’t need to mention in the country that decided the Hummer would be a good ride for in and around town.

4. Bad coffee. If you’re going to charge almost $3 for a 20 ounce cup of regular, no frills drip coffee, there’s no reason you can’t make it from legitimately good grounds. Whatever you lose in the margin will be more than made up for by people who don’t go seek out your competition for the next cup.

Output…

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As a rule, I try to write 300-500 words a day. That doesn’t include anything I write for this blog or others I contribute to from time to time. It definitely doesn’t include anything I write at work – Nothing is more hostile to good writing than applying the Army writing manual. And it absolutely doesn’t include texts, emails, or other sneaky ways you can easily get into that range. As with most things that I actually enjoy doing, the biggest issue is figuring out when the hell I actually have time to sit down and focus on just one thing at a time. That’s not a complaint, just a statement of fact.

The reality is, I might actually hit that goal once or twice during the week if I’m lucky. Weekends are a little easier to manage. Usually after letting the dogs out and getting them fed, I can settle in for an hour or two early on Saturday and SUnday mornings and punch out about 1000 words without too much trouble. Mornings seem to be best for me. I’ve gone back and reread things I’ve written in the hour before bed the next morning and let’s just say it’s not my best work. Not even close. Back when I was a history major, I wrote my best stuff after midnight. A decade’s worth of crawling out of bed to the 5AM alarm seems to have brought that to an end once and for all. I don’t really mind that so much, though, as long as some point in the day is still a good time for it.

Picking up aluminum cans on the side of the road would probably be a more lucrative use of time, but something keeps me coming back to the keyboard day after day. As soon as I figure out why that is, I’ll probably have found my best seller.

Time…

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I’ve had three days off and it hasn’t exactly been one of those nice restful weekends that everyone wants. Between cleaning, vet visits, picking up groceries, more cleaning, laundry, and sundry other odds and ends, I’m not feeling rested at all. I’m sure it doesn’t help that most of those things are what I’ve been putting off for the last two weeks, but still, how about a little time to do nothing at all? Yeah. That’s not going to happen. The good news is that the house is (mostly) clean and there’s a refrigerator full of food again, but that’s not something I can really hang my hat on when I wonder where the long weekend went. It’s all stuff that needed done, of course, but I get the distinct feeling that I’m spinning my wheels, since most of it will all need to be done again next weekend.

What I need is more time. Just a few more hours in the day maybe. Or at this point I’d settle for figuring out a way to better use those six “wasted” hours in the middle of the night when I’m busy just laying there. Ranting about it hasn’t seemed to do much good, so I’d better get moving and make the most out of the couple of hours I’ve got left this afternoon. Sheesh, and I thought time only flew when you were having fun.

What annoys Jeff this week?

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And without further adiu, here’s what’s annoying Jeff this week.

1. Waking up on time and then hitting the snooze bar five times, making yourself 45 minutes late. Clearly there has to be a better way to execute a morning routine.

2. Thursday night laundry. Yes, it saves me from eating up an entire weekend afternoon doing laundry, but it still annoys me. Meh.

3. The 24-hour day. You suck. Seriously. A 30-hour day would be much more conducive to balancing the amount of things that need done with the time available to do them.

4. The neighbor who lets his kids run along the fence taunting the dog. At some point she’ll have enough and bite you in the face. I’ll be smiling on the inside.

Time management…

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I’m a good employee. I’m conscientious, pugnacious, and attentive to detail. I get things done on time and do my best to at least project the illusion of confidence. For the most part, things are reasonably busy and productive (as long as you count meetings as “productive” time). Even on those busy days, once I get back from lunch the days just drag. The 120 minutes between 2 and 4 seem to pass at the same relative speed of the six hours between 7 and 11. I’m sure some big-brained psychologist out there has a good and rational explanation for why that is, but a cursory Google of the issue hasn’t returned any really satisfactory answers.

And don’t get me started on the weekends. They go by so fast that they’re practically non-existent. Seriously, damnit. I no more than wake up on Saturday morning and suddenly it’s Monday again and I’m schlepping down Route 40 with a thermos full of coffee and a bleary-eyed slightly dazed look on my face. Sure, time flies when you’re having fun and all, but should it really fly when all you’re doing is cutting the grass, cooking a few meals, and picking up a bag of dog food? When you’ve figured out the secret to this time management dilemma, let me know.

Sitting here on a Monday night, all I know is that I want my weekend back. Or I want to start my next career as a PowerBall winner. Either way’s good.

Reunion…

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This weekend the Westmar High School Class of 1996 will celebrate its 15-year reunion. A decade and a half. Three lustra. Fifteen years. Nothing in terms of geologic time, of course, but long enough in the hear-and-now world. These five year anniversaries are as good a time for reflection as any and you know from reading that I’m not one to let a good anniversary pass without saying something sappy about it. So here it is …

I have a confession to make. I don’t feel all that different from the much younger version of myself. The thinking part of my brain keeps insisting that I should. That I should maybe feel like more of an adult somehow. I’ve added some paunch around the middle and lost more hair around the top, but I really feel pretty much like the same guy I was then. I mostly like the same food. I mostly like the same music (don’t judge me). A lot of the things that were important to me then are still the ones that are important to me now. Maybe I’m a little more moderate in my politics than I was when I was 18 and knew everything, but that doesn’t seem to make much difference because ultimately, I’m still me at the core.

I know there are plenty of Wildcats from that long-ago class who have their own high school age kids. There’s a thought that sticks with you. Surely they feel different, right? Metaphysically changed somehow by the passage of years and accretion of responsibility? I’ve been out there and seen whole big swaths of the world. I feel like I’ve seen it all… and I’ve mostly done it all. Sometimes to my own detriment, but always good for a “life experience” credit. I’ve done great things and I’ve had my self confidence shattered. Hell, sometimes it’s happened on the same day. But through it all, I don’t feel any different. Same guy, just with a few added layers of experience.

I get up in the morning, put on a sharp shirt and a tie and spend eight hours pretending that I’m a knowledgeable professional… but at heart I’m still the same guy who mostly wants to hang out with his friends and stay up too late shooting pool or sneak up to Frostburg to see a girl. Under the thin veneer of adulthood, I still like driving too fast and going to Denny’s at odd hours. If having a house, holding a steady job, and paying your bills is the defining characteristic of being “grown,” I’ve got it covered. If it’s some deeper change in your psyche, well, that’s a little more problematic.

It’s one of those deep thoughts I have lying in bed before sleep comes: Am I the only one who feels this way? Is everyone else really an adult inside their own head and I’m the only one who feels like he’s playing a part just well enough not to get caught? Maybe I am… in which case this entire post as served as nothing other than a 500-word admission of guilt. Surely I’m not the only one out there faking it, right? Even if we’re all not kids any more, I’m looking forward to seeing the old gang again.

That time…

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It’s getting close to that time on Sunday. You all know the time. That moment when you realize it’s late into Sunday afternoon and you have absolutely no interest in doing whatever it is your overlords and paymasters want you to do on Monday. Maybe that’s the cosmic joke. We spend a quarter of the weekend annoyed that it’s about to be over. I suppose that’s offset a bit by wasting half the day Friday looking forward to the end of the day, but still it seems like a less than optimal trade off. In an hour or two I’ll start thinking about dinner. Not long after that, I’ll notice the sun has started to drop behind the trees. Then there will be a 50 minute reprieve thanks to HBO. But after that, Monday is the inevitable next stop. Meh. I’m not feeling it this week.