Tag Archives: writing

Rough around the edges…

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I’d love to tell you that I remember anything from June 2008, but the fact is it must have been pretty unremarkable. I don’t recall a single event outside of what I’ve been reading while posting this week’s archive update. That doesn’t necessarily mean the old posts lack juice, though. A coupe of this week’s posts are real gems – maybe a little rough around the edges – but they’ve got good bones. Any time a post pops up that touches on a memory from my four years at Frostburg it’s almost always a good time. I’m sure there were some less than good times in there too, but I really don’t remember them. It’s reassuring to remember that no matter how stupid today seems, in a decade I’ll be looking back on this time fondly, having had enough time pass to suppress the worst of the bad moments.

Be sure to check out the posts on how certain phrases I still use came into being. I don’t know if they’ll give you any insight into how my brain works, but they’re good reads… and had the added benefit of setting me to wonder if there are any new words and phrases in my vocabulary that are worthy of an explanation. It’s always nice when these old posts point the way towards some potential new material, because let’s be honest, ginning up new stuff every day is tough.

Traditions…

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In keeping with my now long-standing Sunday tradition, I’m pleased to present this week’s installment of Sunday morning archive posts. Today’s selections come to you live and unedited via tape delay direct from March 2008. From Spring snow in Memphis to contemplating the end of a major stage of my career, we’re covering a lot of ground this week. There weren’t any epic rants in mid-March, so apparently most things were right with the world. I guess even I have weeks like that now and then. I suspect I’ll look back on more recent posts in five or six years and find that I’ve gotten more jaded an cynical over time. Some people would argue that’s a bad thing. I’d argue that it just makes for more entertaining writing.

Check back tomorrow when I’ll be blogging in the present day. I haven’t picked out a topic yet, but I’m sure someone, somewhere will do something ridiculous that will need commentary. One of the great perks of being an observer by nature is that it leaves you with an almost limitless supply of material. Even though I avoid people as a matter of principle, I do appreciate them as a source of content. I’ll be waiting for my Humanitarian of the Year award.

Blink…

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I’ve been staring at this blank screen for the better part of the last hour. The only interruption was watching the cursor. Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink. BlinkBlinkBlinkBlink. There is no more infernal form of torture for someone who pretends to be a writer on the side than a blinking cursor, an empty page, and a brain that refuses to give up even the barest of thoughts about what should be there.

The fact is my brain turned to mush sometime around 1:30 this afternoon and I haven’t had much luck at making sense using the written word since then. It’ll pass. It always does. A cold beer, a good night’s sleep, and hopefully less of an assault on my editorial abilities during the day tomorrow and maybe I’ll be able to string a few coherent words together. Maybe. That’s how it’s always worked in the past, so I’m taking it as an article of faith that the ability to be snarky in print doesn’t just evaporate in an afternoon.

I guess we’ll find out around this time tomorrow.

Pretend…

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I like to pretend there is some kind of art or science to this whole blogging thing. I review the metrics, watch the traffic and hit counts, and imagine that I have some kind of idea what people might be interested in reading. At best it’s a 50-50 proposition most of the time. Fortunately, I’m mostly writing for the sake of writing and working out my chops, so the individual hits and misses aren’t really all that important. Lucky thing, too. If you tied much stock to whether you stats are up or down on any given day you’d drive yourself round the bend in no time.

Sundays are probably my slowest, least read day. I don’t know if that’s because I’m the only one who finds these archival posts even remotely interesting, or because everyone’s gone to church when I’m posting, or that you lazy jerks are still lying about in bed while I’m here slaving away at the keyboard. Not that it’s really important. I’ve been having a blast looking back at how the blog evolved over the last six years. The stuff I’m pulling in now from 2008 is far more personal/day-in-the-life than what I’m posting on a typical day in 2013. I like to think the writing has gotten better and the threads a little more coherent along the way. I know I’m more confident in my voice now that I was in the past, so even if practice doesn’t make perfect, it still makes for a better story.

I think everyone that lives part of their life online has some kind of performance fetish. We all want attention in one way or another. We’re all looking for the next “like” or comment or share at least on some level. For me, it’s the writing it all down that really feels important. I still find it fascinating to see what I thought was important the better part of a decade ago. Some of it holds up to the test of time and some of it just leaves me shaking my head and wondering what I was thinking.

Don’t forget to check out this morning’s archive posts from February 2008!

25,000…

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Sometime while I was at work today, jeffreytharp.com rolled over the 25,000 view mark. That’s pretty impressive for some random guy posting whatever pops into his head on a website that doesn’t do any actual advertising. The internet never ceases to amaze me with the reach of its long arms. In that 25,000 visits, every continent is represented (except Antarctica). Not a bad voice at all for a kid from down the Crick.

I started blogging in June 2006, wandered around through a host of platforms from MySpace to Blogger and finally here to WordPress. It started as an occasional post, morphed into posts showing up a few times a week, and now a new post shows up, generally, every day. I’ve learned more about writing from keeping this blog and its predecessors than I ever learned in school. I’ve learned more about myself that I thought I wanted to know too. I’ve learned that sometimes I pull my punches and that despite a life largely lived online, there are still elements that I’m never going to feel comfortable making available for public consumption. I use to feel guilty about keeping some part of myself separate from the blog, but I’m past that now.

After seven years of writing, I’m a bit surprised that I haven’t run out of things to say. I’m even more surprised that there are people out there who are legitimately interested in what’s going to show up on these pages next. For a guy not exactly known for his humility, I’ve found that to be incredibly humbling.

For good or bad, every word written on these pages is mine. They each reflect the moment in time that they were written. For those 629 people currently following jeffreytharp.com and for those yet to find this little endeavor, I really do thank you from the bottom of my heart. Even though I’ve said I don’t write for an audience, I have to admit that it’s far more entertaining with everyone along with me for the ride. Let’s see how things look from the 50,000 view level.

Casting around…

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After spending two years milling about with Nobody Told Me… The Cynic’s Guide for New Employees and a few months hashing out What Annoys Jeff this Week: 2012 in Review, it feels a bit odd to be sitting here without a current work in progress. Not a bad odd, just a different one. I should be putting this time to good use on something, but so far I have no earthly idea what that will be at the moment. Of course there will be a 2013 eBook edition of What Annoys Jeff this Week, but with 24 regular weekly installments yet to be written, I’m nowhere near interested in putting the cart so far out in advance of the horse. In the meantime, I’ll just sit here hoping that inspiration strikes in a big way.

For a few weeks there I was tinkering around with the idea of working up a survival guide for new teachers, but that experience is so far in the past, getting somewhere beyond the obvious was a problem. I wish I would have kept better notes of the pitfalls and foibles of my brief brush with the teaching profession. Sadly, I didn’t start keeping detailed book until I shifted careers and realized the true value of documenting most everything. Since fiction doesn’t really feel like my genre and God knows I don’t want to get bogged down into a multi-year long research project, I’ll keep casting around until I land on something that can hold my interest for 20 or 30,000 words.

If anyone has ideas, consider this your opportunity to become part of the process.

What Annoys Jeff this Week: The Movie

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WAJTW 2012 - Cover ImageOK. I lied. It’s not a movie, but it is a book… and that’s like a movie, except for the part where there aren’t any moving pictures or dialog. You can still look mindlessly at the screen while jamming your face full of over-buttered popcorn and overpriced snowcaps, so it has that going for it.

I’ve been posting over the last few days as What Annoys Jeff this Week: 2012 in Review becomes available through the various retail sites, but since nothing is ever official until it shows up on the blog, I just wanted to let you know that you can now get your very own copy from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

For those using some of the more esoteric e-readers, WAJTW: 2012 in Review will also be available (through Smashwords distribution) from the iTunes, Sony, and Kobo eBook stores in a few weeks.

Last Friday…

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thumbsdown-gladiator It occurred to me driving in this morning that if everything goes as planned, this will be my last Friday at the office for the rest of fiscal year 2013. Next week, I’ll be celebrating Independence Day by taking Friday off and making a 4-day weekend, but from there on out I am a part time employee of our dear old Uncle Sam.

We all know I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to live in the land of the perpetual three-day weekend, but it’s living in the land of the 80% pay check that seems like something of a problem. I’ve found that most things are never as good or as bad as I anticipate them being, but in this one little case, I’m not holding my breath for it to magically transform into a fantastic opportunity.

Thank God I like to read and write. Those are at least low budget entertainment options I can indulge in to excess in this new found free time. Have I mentioned I’m glad I didn’t get around to buying a boat?

Catching up…

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In addition to the 185 work-related emails yesterday, one of the hardest parts of being away is that I fell way, way behind on my blog reading last week. As much as I like to think of blogging as a solitary activity, the reality is that that the community of bloggers is surprisingly interactive. Instead of just a spectator sport, you end up in a round robin of reading, commenting, responding, and repeating. If you follow a dozen blogs and even half of them post every day, after a week you end up with a backlog of something close to literary tonnage. Now that the daily routine is getting back to a semblance of normalcy, I’m wading into the backlog. Let’s just say it’s a good thing that I like to read, because this is going to take a while.

I find summer in general to be the hardest time for a person who wants to spend time reading and writing. Writing in winter is easy – it’s dark by 5PM, it’s cold, and you just don’t feel like you’re missing much while you’re up to your earlobes in words. Summer is a different story, for me at least. It always feels like there is more to do – and those competing interests seem to win out at least as often as they lose. Maybe that’ll change now that we’re reaching the time of the season when hiding out in the cool embrace of the air conditioner is the order of the day.

I’ll catch up on my backlog soon enough… now if I can just shoehorn some quality time for writing back into the schedule, all will be right with the world.

Why we blog…

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I got an email this afternoon from “a new media agency headquartered in the UK” wondering if I was “interested in selling advertising space on jeffreytharp.com.” The sender promises that advertisements would be unobtrusive and that they can pay an annual upfront payment for the advertising space. While the email does track back to an IP address in Uxbridge, England it’s safe to say that it qualifies as one of those sounds too good opportunities.

The truth is, I’m not blogging for advertisers. I’m not blogging to sell banners or to generate click-throughs or even to climb in the Technorati ratings. Mostly I’m blogging because I think I can turn a pretty phrase now and then and it seems that people are kind enough to humor me by reading it on a regular basis. If I happen to sell a few of my own wears in the process, so much the better – but this blog isn’t now and never will be written for the sake of generating a few pennies of advertising revenue. The complete lack of a coherent campaign for selling my own book should pretty much tell you where advertising falls on my list of priorities.

I think everyone that blogs harbors some kind of secret dream of being the next breakaway hit… and while it would be incredible to be on the receiving end of millions of hits a day, if I get there through the merits of the written word, that’s awesome. If it take shilling for some advertising company, well, I’ll keep my day job (at least 4 days a week) and enjoy the 20-30 people who check in around here on a regular basis.