Tag Archives: words

Say what you mean…

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Here’s a little advice from your kindly Uncle Jeff: Don’t say things you don’t mean. Like when you walk by someone’s desk and they’re eating lunch don’t lead off whatever jackassery is about to flow out of your filthy pie hole with a platitude of “not meaning to interrupt your lunch.” That’s exactly what you mean to do. I know it’s what you mean to do because it’s exactly what you’re doing. You’re giving the truth a head fake and then diving on towards whatever useless drivel you intended to spew all along. If you didn’t mean to interrupt lunch your actions would have passed two basic tests: 1) You wouldn’t have come by during what is commonly referred to as “lunch time” and 2) When you saw that I was engaged in the act of eating lunch, you would have said something like “Oh hey, I see you’re eating. Give me a call when you’re done.”

Instead of that, though, you first assured me that you in fact didn’t mean to interrupt my lunch and then immediately proceeded to do the precise thing that you said you weren’t going to do. Perhaps you can see where there is an ever so slight disconnect here between words and actions. It’s no wonder everyone in this damned country has trust issues. It would have been far better for everyone involved if you had just been honest in your intentions up front. It would have saved me from making a mental note that you’re a douchecanoe who doesn’t know falsehood from truth and it would have saved me the approximately 300 words it’s going to take for me to tell the story. So really, what you’ve done is wasted my time twice today and it all could have been avoided if you would have approached, said what you needed to say, and then departed the area in as expeditious a manner as possible.

In conclusion I hope that in the future we can all dispense with the meaningless and misleading platitudes and just get on with saying whatever we were going to say in the first place. We can probably all save a shit ton of time that way.

And then on other days…

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Some days, like yesterday, the words flow out like water from a geyser – pressurized and seemingly inexhaustible. Then there are the other days, when nothing at all fits; the words aren’t there. Not even the topics are there. It doesn’t matter how much backup material you’re sitting on when you can’t manage to string the narrative together. If I felt like being honest, I’d admit that those are usual the evenings when I pull out a canned post – one that’s not time sensitive – that I have pre-written and occasionally use for filler when life intervenes in the writing process. As it is, though, the cupboard on those is currently bare so in the absence of good options, this is what you get.

Sometimes writing is an art. Other times it’s more like a fist fight. The fact that tonight is the latter doesn’t mean that it’s bad, just that it’s harder than it would be otherwise. That can make for good writing or it can make everything feel more than a little forced. That’s mostly the luck of the draw on any given night.

I’d like to tell you I had a better formula for how this is supposed to work, but writing, even these simple small posts, is a lot more like breathing than I want to admit even to myself. It’s just something that happens naturally without too much intervention. Sometimes it’s easy and other times it’s labored, but mostly it’s outside your direct control.

Even with the world on fire and a hundred possible things to write about, occasionally you get nothing. Since I’m not on a deadline and I’m not doing this for the money, the occasional bout of getting nothing isn’t really so bad… and since no one is asking you to pay for it, you’re mostly stuck reading it until I find something more interesting to say.

In the meantime, if you find yourself sitting in a cubicle and feel like chuckling at the fact workplaces everywhere are quite possibly filled with asshats of every conceivable form and style, click over and read a few posts at http://www.askamanager.org. They’re not all funny, but most of them are damned entertaining.

The wee small hours of the morning, or Fueling the beast…

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Something strange happened in the wee small hours of the morning today. Just after 2AM I found myself inexplicably awake, in the company of the whirr of the overhead fan and two snoring dogs. It was as peaceful a nighttime scene as one could hope to find, but my subconscious was clearly in an uproar, awake, and was rather insistent that we were going to be awake for a while.

I’m used to having ideas for the blog come at me before drifting off to sleep or maybe as I’m waking up. I make a habit of catching those ideas on my phone’s note pad. It’s jammed full of half formed ideas and concepts I may or may not ever get around to dealing with. Mostly those come in the form of a sentence or phrase I can use later, but last night came at me in a torrent of words. Judging by a daylight look, the grammar, punctuation, stray words, and general tone I can say that my subconscious isn’t much for exerting editorial control on the fly. In a few places things are so jumbled that awake me can’t even deciphered what asleep me might have been going after. Most of the rest, though, is clear enough in its intent.

It seems my subconscious wanted to wait until the dead of night to walk me through the outline of what I’ll only call the most dark, disturbingly introspective assessments of self I’ve ever experienced. I don’t suppose it should be surprising that such a thing would find outlet as one of my old fashioned blog outlines. It’s the method I use most often to give complex ideas form and structure before going on to put them down in the more narrative long form.

What I was left with early this morning was a laundry list of a sort. A list of the accumulated slights, grudges, broken hearts, and disappointments. A list of the battles lost, and lost causes yet to come, and standing stubborn against the running tide. A list of the moments of vanity, and pride, and ego stretching out further than grasp. A list of the times I’ve retreated behind my own battlements, inside myself, and what that’s cost me.

It was an all access pass to the oddities of mind that drive the fusion reactor deep at my core, that piles action upon action, cycle upon cycle, loss upon loss, victory upon victory and the hundred different dreams and fears that make me and that make me question who “me” really is at the heart of things. Is there more? Is this enough?

I’m left today finding the whole thing exhilarating, unsettling, fascinating, and horrifying in turn. Maybe that’s what it’s supposed to feel like when we get an unexpected look at what fuels the beast within… or maybe it’s just a sign of my impending mid-life crisis. If that’s the case, leaving off the heavy handedness and filling my dreams with visions of a new Corvette would have been message enough.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The Pope. The leader of an organization that has carved out a nation-state enclave for itself in the center of Rome, extracts immense financial tribute from every nation on earth, and defends itself behind… wait for it… walls, has implied that building a wall between the US and Mexico wouldn’t be the act of a Christian. Now the last time I was in Rome, in order to get into St. Peter’s Square I had to pass through metal detectors under the watchful eyes of armed guards. To get into St. Peter’s itself there was another line, admission tickets, and established entry procedures. It was the same at the Vatican museum. Now unless Francis has thrown open all the doors and is letting people wander the halls of Vatican City at will, I’d respectfully suggest he sit down, shut up, and let the Americans worry about how best to defend our own country’s borders. If expecting people to line up and follow the rules is good enough to enter the Vatican, surely the Holy Father shouldn’t object to other nations expecting those who wish entry to line up and follow the rules of that location too.

2. Term Limits. In the last week I’ve seen articles calling for term limits everywhere. Term limits for the Congress. Term limits for the Court. Term limits for state legislatures. The thing is, though, we have term limits baked right into the system. The Constitution provides term limits at the federal level in the form of elections. Every two years we have the option to throw out every single member of the House of Representatives and 1/3 of the United States Senate. Every fourth year we have the option to turn out the president. We the people make the consistent choice to throw almost none of them out and reelect the incumbents we claim to despise. So instead of using our votes, we clamber for yet another law to allow us to do something that’s already well within the scope of our power as citizens. We have term limits already, but refuse to use them as described in America’s damned owner’s manual.

3. Putting Words in My Mouth. Here’s some advice: Don’t do it. I’m wordy enough as it is and I’m more than happy to provide commentary on whatever someone might want to hear. As demonstrated by this nearly ten year long adventure in blogging, letting people know what’s on my mind or what I think about any given topic isn’t something from which I shy away. Believe me when I say I don’t need your assistance in this matter. In fact your assistance is most unnecessary and unwelcome. It’s apt to be met by a highly energetic and thoroughly negative response.

[Adjective] Professionals…

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My little part of Uncle’s vast army of minions has been plagued with morale issues for what feels like as long as I can remember. As usual, there’s no one root cause. There is a conglomeration of issues that beset and bespoil any engendered feelings of goodwill. Maybe that’s just the natural state of things in an enormous bureaucracy – the unhappy rabble fester in a simmering cauldron of discontent while the gods on Olympus conduct studies, launch pilot programs, dither, and tune their fiddles. They may well be trying to do something corrective, but either they’re too far removed to really understand the fine points, bad choices are being foisted upon them from still higher up the mountain, or they’re simply living embodiments of the Peter Principle. Not altogether rarely, you’ll find a combination of all three – an Unholy Trinity of Bureaucracy if you will.

The latest trend-of-the-moment is making everyone refers to themselves as “Trusted Professionals.” I’m sure someone came up with it as a means of improving the esprit de corps, of conveying the privilege of being part of something greater than any one individual, but seriously the phrase just begs for mockery. Crusted Professionals. Rusted Professionals. Busted Professionals. Take your pick. Insert the adjective of your choice and you, my friend, are now well on your way to being as jaded and cynical as the rest of us.

As a writer, I firmly believe that words are important. Words can change the course of history. Words only do that, though, when they’re back up by deeds. When they’re not, words are just words – more flotsam and jetsam on the mighty sea of brainstorms that fizzled before they ever really got started. If you want someone to be a trusted professional, then start trusting them to be professionals. Set the standard and then hold them accountable for results. The rest will follow.

Or just make them repeat an otherwise meaningless catch phrase at the end of meetings and hope it catches on. At least that way it will be fodder for the interwebs.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Sticks and stones. I might be part of the last generation that grew up learning that sticks and stones would break our bones, but names would never hurt us. We’re also perhaps the last generation that will get to use the work “thug” to refer to a violent criminal. It’s not a surprise. When we live in a world where everyone wants to get through life without their sensibilities or little feelings being hurt, there’s not much hope. Personally, I refuse to be afraid of or intimidated by mere words… not even the one’s Carlin couldn’t say on television. I can’t help but think we’d all be better off if we’d collectively grow a thicker skin and spend a little last time being “offended” by every little thing that doesn’t fit in nicely with our own worldview.

2. Reorganization. I’ve been with my employer now for a little more than 12 years. In that time I’ve lived through six major reorganizations. Those are just the ones that impacted me directly. I’ve probably seen at least twice or three times that number happen. Of course there’s nothing wrong with changing things up to make yourself more efficient and effective. That’s good business. It’s just that when you do it on average every other year there’s no way in hell you’re making those decisions based on consistently assembled data… and when the next guy finds something he doesn’t like, we’ll just go ahead and shuffle the chairs again and see how everything shakes out. I’d never claim to have the right answers, but I do know that throwing darts and hoping for the best is rarely a management best practice.

3. Accusations. If your default answer to a different viewpoint on why things got batshit crazy in Baltimore is “you’re a racist,” it may be time to realize that other viewpoints may be legitimate – even if you don’t happen to personally agree with it. If that’s the only argument you can bring to the table, we’re well past the point of having a reasonable discussion. When that’s your answer to an honest, probing question, it’s safe to consider our conversation at an end. You don’t have anything to tell me that I need to hear.

Indoor outdoor…

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Picture it… a semi-lit auditorium fills nearly to capacity, the public address system crackles to life, and a hush falls over the 600 gathered seat-fillers. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please,” the disembodied voice implores. “Today’s ceremony is an outdoor event being held indoors.”

And that’s the point where they lost me. The longer my career runs, you see, the more I come to realize it’s largely been a series of ridiculous propositions. As a writer I recognize that words are powerful. They are precise and have meaning. In the best tradition of the bureaucracy, however, the actual meaning of the words has little to no applicability to how we chose to use – or abuse – them on a daily basis.

By nothing more than an announcement from the podium, all of us in a partially filled auditorium collectively accepted that for all official purposes we were sitting outdoors. The sun was officially shining. The colors were officially fluttering in the breeze. They were decidedly not hanging limp and sodden from their staff. There absolutely was not official mud on the sidewalks from having bleachers towed into position during a driving rainstorm. Mud, droopy flags, and indoor ceremonies, you may know, never officially exist. They’re simply a figment of our collective, unofficial, imagination and a blatant violation of policy.

Why, you ask, perform the linguistic gymnastics of engaging in an indoor outdoor ceremony? As best I can tell it’s so the small group assembled on stage didn’t have to take off their hats. When you make the case thusly, how can it make anything other than absolutely perfect sense.

Experience has taught me that it helps dramatically if you’re willing to completely suspend disbelief for at least eight hours daily. On the other hand, if you you’re unwilling, it’s the kind of thing that might just drive a man to drink.

Incantation…

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My entire life, I’ve been searching for just the right combination of words. I’ve always been convinced that words are important. They have meaning. I’m convinced that the right word and the right time can save your soul. In the right hands, words are a real thing of beauty. In the wrong ones you wonder if we all weren’t better off huddled around a paleolithic fire grunting and pointing to make our will known.

Maybe I’m biased because words are the gift I got. Other people got chiseled good looks and a full head of hair. I got words. That’s not a complaint. If I had to pick, I wouldn’t have had it differently. Words are my big gun. They’re the thing in my arsenal that make me think if I look just hard enough, put them in the right order, speak the incantation just so, I can turn the tide. It might not always seem this way, but when the moment calls for it I can be one seriously articulate sonofabitch.

I can count the times words let me down on one hand – maybe two if I really stretch way back. Those moments stand out mostly because they’ve almost always come as a complete shock. Words move people when you get them in the proper order and everything is supposed to follow from there. Except sometimes they don’t follow. Much to my chagrin I’ve had to learn repeatedly that you hit every syllable dead on and still fail to make a mark or carry your point. They’re not moments I like to dwell on, even though I’ve been doing that quite a bit these last few days.

It’s one of those unfortunate instances when best effort doesn’t stack up to good enough. It’s humbling and paves the way to all manner of self-doubt. It’s a bad head space to be in, but you can’t fight it – not directly, anyway. The best I’ve ever been able to manage is to drop my shoulder and shove through while hoping it doesn’t take too long to blunder through to a point where the world feels normally again.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Warning the USSR… errr… Russia. I’ve lost count of the number of times in the last six months that the US has “warned” Russia that its bad behavior will have really bad consequences. As far as I can tell, our national warning is roughly equivalent to an exasperated mother warning the child who’s trying to set the curtains on fire that they’ll “be in trouble when dad gets home.” Except dad isn’t coming home. Ever. We warn and nothing happens. We warn and the UN tries to just talk it out. We warn and the world ignores us. Historically speaking the only influence we’ve ever had on that part of the world, is when we spoke out from a position of military and economic strength and with the voice of a leader who demonstrated his willingness to back up his words with deeds. Now that we as a country seem to be resolved to back up our words with only more words, well, maybe we should just keep our national mouth shut instead of repeatedly sounding like the neighborhood wimp begging “come on guys, stop it.” Better to stay silent than to make a display our current flaccidity on the international stage.

2. Peeing in Portland. Having spent some time in Portland and having enjoyed many, many of their fine micro brews while I was there, I can understand the overwhelming need to pee at inopportune moments. Apparently yesterday someone else had the same experience, but instead of finding the nearest available tree they followed the altogether more dramatic option of taking a leak in one of the city’s reservoirs. And while that’s bad, I think maybe the city overreacted in their response of dumping 38 million gallons of water literally down the drain. I know the vast majority of us don’t want urine spiked drinking water, but it seems to me that anyone who’s ever used a swimming pool are probably exposed to a much higher concentration of the stuff than the good people of Portland were as a result of this incident. And that doesn’t even take into account the number of non-human critters who have used Portland’s open air reservoirs as an all access restroom. All I’m saying is that sometimes overkill really isn’t the answer… except when something is caught on film and a local water authority wants to show that it’s going the extra mile. My guess, if it hadn’t happened within range of a security camera, no one would have a clue it even happened. Sometimes, we’re all better off that way.

3. Rush Hour. Calling it rush hour might be a little extreme, especially for a guy who use to grind it out on the DC beltway and 95 every morning and afternoon, but lately the flight away from the office here has started taking on that flavor. They’re doing some kind of seemingly random construction outside the fence and the Jersey barriers are apparently just enough to make every driver trying to leave a 4PM forget everything they ever knew about operating a motor vehicle. Where I use to be to the car, out the gate, and pointed the right direction on the highway in under 10 minutes, now 20-25 is the norm. Sure, in the grand scheme, and extra ten or fifteen minutes doesn’t make that much difference, but it’s happening at the end of the day, when I want to be anywhere other than where I am. Really, at that point, anything standing between me and the house is considered a hostile target to be put down, gone around, over, or through. I doubt I’m alone in this feeling, but it’s one of those unnecessarily annoying things that could be alleviated by, oh, I don’t know, opening another gate and a few additional outbound lanes of traffic. Or we can just let departing personnel build themselves into a mile long backup in their daily effort to get away. Apparently that’s fine too.

Precision…

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I’ve been told on a number of occasions recently that English is a precise language and we must use it precisely. I’m good with that. I like precision. I like to use words to cut through the clutter and mean exactly what I say. Except the problem is, most people don’t. Most people use the language as just another avenue to be vacillate and be throughly indecisive.

Don’t be surprised then, if you ask me “Do you want to do Activity X?” and my response is an immediate no. I’m answering your question honestly and directly. No, I do not want to participate in Activity X. In fact, generally I’d rather stake myself on an anthill covered in honey than engage in Activity X. However, if you changed the question slightly, by saying “Will you do Activity X?” or a more directive “You’re going to do Activity X,” I’ll probably shrug, possibly roll my eyes, and get on with dealing with whatever X is in our little equation.

See, the social contract depends largely on people doing things they don’t want to do. But when you frame the question as whether I “want” to do something or not, you’ve given me the option of saying no, because that’s the honest answer. I spend most days doing things I don’t particularly want to do, so when given the option to avoid adding one more to the list, I’m not sure why anyone would be surprised when I opt out… because frankly life is entirely too short and it’s already too filled with random pointless activities that we don’t really want to do in the first place.