The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for March 2012

The Lorax, Dr. Seuss, Dad Blogging & More

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The Lorax is one of my favorite Dr. Seuss stories but that wasn’t enough to keep me from falling asleep during the movie. Actually I can’t say that the movie was horrible because the reality is that I was sleep deprived when I went to see it.

I spent more time squirming around my seat than most of the children that were in there, my own included.

Incidentally I have noticed that I can’t watch a movie with the kids without taking a few moments here and there to stare at their faces. I am always curious to see if they are enjoying it. Don’t know about you but I take such pleasure in seeing wide eyed looks and huge smiles upon their faces.

I stare at their eyes and wonder what it is that they see. Sometimes it reminds me of the days before they could speak when I would watch them and wonder what it was they were thinking. I wonder if one day when life is feeling a bit tougher will they look at old Doc Seuss for advice.

Will they find it interesting to know that Dr. Seuss was once a political cartoonist. Maybe yes, maybe no. Not sure that it matters.

Bloggers are like Sneetches

Bloggers are like Sneetches or so I have written on more than a few occasions. Roam around this joint and you’ll find the signs of the man who doesn’t care and the boy who sometimes feels snubbed. Walk around and you’ll see that sometimes I get pissed off for not getting more attention or because I haven’t been picked for XYZ.

But I am not kidding when I say that I don’t do this for but you but for me. We all want validation. We all like being told that we are important and that we mean something to others. People remember how you made them feel and I know that I have left my share of wreckage.

I am not proud of that, well not most of the time. I won’t lie and say that I haven’t been pleased when I know that I have pricked some of you. Doesn’t mean that I am any smarter, stronger, weaker, meaner or any “er” that you can think of. Just means that I am human.

But that is part of the joy of blogging. Part of the reason I do this is sort out the thoughts and feelings that float through my head. As a father it is important to me to figure this crap out because it helps me help my children.

Someone asked me why I write about being a dad blogger but don’t have a tagline that supports that. That is because I am not just a dad blogger and I don’t want to be pigeon holed solely as one.

They told me that you shouldn’t try to be all things to all people and my response was that I am not.  I am not trying to be all things to all people here either. Maybe I’ll make some changes here. Maybe I’ll adjust how I do things or maybe I won’t. That is not me trying to be adversarial either. I am just not sure that there is a need.

Changes

It might be fair to say that with all of the changes taking place in my life I am not ready, willing or interested in focusing on changes here. Might be fair to say that I am not always a big fan of change in general.

But it is also fair to say that I often embrace contradiction. I like change as much as I hate it. What I dislike most is the anticipation about what might happen or what could happen. I don’t like that part at all.

When I fly I hate waiting for take-off. I just want the damn plane to get moving.  I hate being trapped in my seat. Get us up on the air.

Here at TheJackB the biggest change I am wrestling with is trying to figure out how to fix some of the design issues. I want this place to look sharper than it does. I want it to be cleaner and I want the pages to load faster.

You might see a whole hell of a lot of changes here. You might see me turn this place upside down and inside out. But I suppose that before I do that I ought to do something about getting more sleep. Ought to work on getting more than four hours each night so that I don’t snore my way through the movies.

As always I am still encouraging you to join my Facebook Fan page and to check out the story I am working on over here.

One more thing, thank you to those who have been here since the beginning and those who have joined along the way. You may not always comment but I see you in my stats and I appreciate the emails and comments on FB. Your presence is noted and appreciated.

Jack has left the building.

The Joy & Glory Of Being Dad

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Dr. Seuss Should Have Been a Dad Blogger
Oh The Places You'll Go.

listen to ‘The Joy & Glory Of Being Dad’ on Audioboo

As promised here are some links and clips.

“Life doesn’t come with a GPS and if it did mine would constantly say “recalculating.” Some people take the high road and some people take the low road. Me? I don’t take a road, I just follow my nose through thick and thin. During the good times I deem it part of my roguish nature and tell those who ask that I am 240 pounds of 5 year-old boy. During the bad times I attribute it to my disdain for authority and desire to march to the beat of my own drummer. Did I mention that my drummer is always off beat.”

The Naked Truth

“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.”
Abraham Lincoln

Who wants to get up and dance?

And now for some more links:

Pinterest Forced Me To Change How I Blog

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oodnata

Pinterest didn’t really force me to change how I blog but it did push me to make some changes sooner than later. It is not because Pinterest has become a major source of traffic but because its success has reminded me of the value/importance in including pictures here.

Ok, the potential for increasing traffic did play a role but it is secondary. It is secondary because one of my focal points is doing a better job of securing the traffic that comes through here. My bounce rate is higher than I want it to be.

That is just a fancy way of saying that some people don’t take any time to stick around and see the sights here. I’d like to encourage them to take a moment to check out our wares and one way of doing that is to help distract them with bright shiny objects.

Where Do You Find Photos?

I am so glad that you asked. There are multiple ways to locate photos. I use my Zemanta plugin and I rely upon some of the services listed in the Best Places to Find Free and Low-Cost Stock Photos Online. And of course I use my own photos.

Oh, and don’t let me forget to mention that you should check out my friend Suzanne’s photos too. Just remember not to steal her stuff without her permission first. If that is not enough you can get in touch with my buddy John and ask him about his work too.

Česky: Koala šplhající na strom. Vyfoceno 28. ...
Image via Wikipedia

I don’t know about you but that looks like one cranky Koala Bear to me. I can relate to being cranky but I don’t a clue why a freaking marsupial would be upset. Dude just has to hang out on damn tree eating Eucalyptus leaves and chilling out.

It is not like he is some crazy dad blogger trying to figure out whether to send the kids to public or private school. You won’t hear him talking about accountability and forgiveness. Speaking of which sometimes I like looking back at old posts to see what I had to say about apologizing  or begging forgiveness.

Why do I look back? Simple really, I am curious to see if my feelings have changed. Have I grown up or taken a different tack? Can’t say without looking back. Of course it sometimes makes me cringe to read old posts but it is part of how we figure out if progress has been made.

Can’t speak for you but by my way of accounting progress is important. I am pleased to say that I have gotten better at apologizing. There are still moments where I hate like hell doing it, but it doesn’t make me quite as crazy as it used to.

Does that mean that I am maturing? Don’t answer that, I like being the kid.

Happy Birthday Grandpa

It is officially St. Patrick’s Day but to me it will always be my grandfather’s birthday. He would have been 98 today and I would have had great fun asking him to tell me what he thought of President Lincoln or what it was like to hang out with Moses.

He would have laughed and we would have engaged in our usual banter. At some point he would have reminded me that grandma’s birthday is a couple of weeks away and that he should probably start looking for a gift.

So grandpa I think that I’ll help you with a different sort of gift. I think that you’ll appreciate this

Yep, that is grandma’s tombstone and here is a link to Beloved Wife. It is my way for helping to make sure that grandma isn’t forgotten. I know you were worried about that. I have to tell you that I remember the night you told me that grandma had a great ass (you were both in your 90s) and the look she gave you.

It was a combination of irritation and love but I always appreciated it.  When I think about your last few years together the image I have is of the two of you sitting together holding hands.

It was good to see you two the other night and I won’t complain if you choose to visit again.

Pinterest, Pictures & Stories

I am not just a dad blogger who is also a writer. I am a storyteller. I suppose that is part and parcel of being a father. Anyhoo, I am grateful that Pinterest helped me to remember that sometimes pictures are the most important part of a story. They don’t say that a picture is worth a thousand words for nothing.

What do you think?

Be A Better Blogger- Sustain Your Effort Edition

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English: Groucho Marx & anonymous blogging
Image via Wikipedia

Welcome to the Be A Better Blogger- Sustain Your Effort Edition. This is where I share all the tricks of trade at cut rate prices with you. Ok, that last part was a lie because what I am sharing here is absolutely free.

The only word in the entire English language that sounds prettier than Free is your own name. That is right, people love the sound of their own name. And remember if you are  someone who doesn’t it means that you suffer from severe mental and emotional problems. Don’t you just love how I insult those who disagree with me because everyone knows that the best way to convince someone that they are wrong is to insult them.

Or maybe that just works in politics, I dunno. Sometimes I think about becoming a politician. Might be fun to be completely detached from reality and say whatever the hell I want and pretend that I have all the answers.

There Is a Point and A Purpose

There is a point and a purpose to all that I do here. Every single dot, dash and semi colon has its place. Don’t talk to me about being grammatically challenged because I have forgotten more than you once knew, probably forgot more than your parents too.

Does this mean that I am doing a good job of  following Judy’s advice in using my blog to build a believable brand as an author? I don’t know but I can say that I feel pretty good about what happens here. I still like showing up each day and I still feel like I can punch out hundreds of thousands of words with reckless abandon.

That reckless abandon is important to me. It is part of how I know that writing is something that is filled with joy for me. And that is part of my daily mission to find joy and do the things that help me manifest it in positive ways.

Ideally that means that you feel my joy and it rubs off on you just a little bit.

Relate to Others

These words we share here are offered for a million different reasons by a million different people. If our purpose is to build a community of readers, writers and others than those words have to help others relate to you. They have to serve as a window into your world and shine a light on things that others recognize within themselves.

Blog posts about old jobs and the experiences we had are good at doing that. Most people have found a day or two to be challenging. More than a few have wished that they didn’t have to sit at a desk all day to make a buck. Write about the boy/girl that got away or might still be and you’ll find an audience.

Stories about children, parenting, family, your dreams and of course blogging are good too. Don’t let a lack of comments fool you into thinking that you should quit. Goodbye Grandma receives a steady flow of traffic but there are no words in the comment section that show that.

Sustain Your Effort

There are a lot of important things to remember about blogging and no doubt that sometimes it can feel overwhelming. A good design that is user friendly, fast loading page and pleasing to the eye goes a long way.

It is something that I need to work on here. I need more images and I need to tweak things. Eight years into this crazy game I am constantly juggling and adjusting this and that. But in my eyes that is only part of the package and in some respects secondary.

Great content makes a huge difference too, but if you can’t sustain your effort than it might not matter. There are no overnight success stories in blogging at least not the way that I define it. You need time to figure out who you are and to find your voice but you also need time to build your community.

When you sustain your effort these things happen at a natural pace and you wake up one day with a broad smile on your face because there is beauty in blogging. You have built something. You are the creator of a world that otherwise would not be and you are privy to something special.

While you ruminate upon that I’ll leave you with links to the last set of songs that I listened to on iTunes today:

Waterfall “May This be Love” – Jimi Hendrix

Fire- Jimi Hendrix

Closer– Nine Inch Nails

Plowed– Sponge

Hurt– Johnny Cash

Heart of Gold– Johnny Cash

I Hung My Head— Johnny Cash

Suspicious Minds– Elvis Presley

In The Ghetto- Elvis Presley

Blue Suede Shoes– Elvis Presley

Yoda’s Life Lessons For Business & Raising Children

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listen to ‘Yoda’s Life Lessons For Business & Raising Children’ on Audioboo

“You must unlearn what you have learned.”- Yoda

I am not the first person to use Star Wars quotes and or references to make a point or to tell a story, nor will I be the last. The Empire Strikes Back is one of my favorite movies for a multitude of reasons not the least of which is because as a father, writer and person I see more than a few lessons to be learned from it.

Sift through the quotes in this link and you’ll find more than a few nuggets of wisdom worth writing about.

Where is Your Focus?

Yoda: Ready are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained. A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things. You are reckless.

That subhead and the quote that follows are easily applicable to me and I suspect to many others. If you listened the audiopost I addressed several different things in it. I talked about childhood memories, keywords, concern about people who hurt children and my desire to be wealthy enough to own a castle and a private jet.

If you’ll forgive the egocentric nature of it all I’ll my best to tie it together in a neat little package. My children and I often speak about dreams and what we want our futures to look like. We talk about the need to plan to live our dreams and not dream our lives away. And we talk about the importance of not allowing the fear/insecurity of others prevent us from doing these things.

My focus with my children is trying to provide them with more than a great education. I want them to believe in themselves. I want them to have confidence in their abilities and to know that some people don’t distinguish between their fear and what is possible. Some people let their insecurity provide undue influence upon what they are willing to do and they will extend that outwards.

“Only a fully trained Jedi Knight, with the Force as his ally, will conquer Vader and his Emperor. If you end your training now – if you choose the quick and easy path as Vader did – you will become an agent of evil.”-Yoda

Several years ago I turned down an opportunity to start a business because I was concerned about stability, or so I thought. What I realized later on was that I let other people unduly influence me. They have no entrepreneurial spirit and the thought of doing something like that scared them so badly that they couldn’t endorse it.

I made a mistake in listening to them. I made a mistake in not taking the chance. I don’t wear a sweater when others are cold, but in this case I did. Even a Jedi Master like Yoda can be mistaken. We can’t say what would have happened had I gone for it, but I feel like I could have been successful at it.

Set Your Standards

In business and in life I set my standard. I try to write my posts as if we are having a conversation. Some conversations are short and some are long. That means that I don’t write short posts because I fear short attention spans. My community and my readers will read the words they find here because they find value in them. If they don’t they’ll go elsewhere and that is ok with me.

It is ok because I have my standards. I know that if I did things differently I could grow the blog much faster than I have. I know that if I did more data mining and focused on the keywords I could build more traffic.

But I do things that drive my passion and fuel my fire because that is the only way you last in this game. And let me reiterate, if you are the person(s) who found my blog by searching for “I can’t stop hurting children” you MUST get help. There is no excuse, no rationale for hurting children. I am sorry if you were a victim but you need to break the cycle.

Castle Durnstein (with YPaul)
Castle Durnstein (with YPaul) (Photo credit: muppetspanker)

Of Castles and Private Jets

Why do I want a castle and a private jet? Well, I think it might be kind of cool to own a castle. I just like the idea and besides when you own a castle you don’t look as silly walking around in a suit of armor. Nor do you get in trouble for referring to the women in the castles as wenches and every man wants a wench. Ok, as a PSA let me clarify that I suspect some women might not like being called wenches, do so at your own risk.

Also I figure that a castle is easily large enough to hold a very cool library and that is something that I really want.

The private jet part is simple. I like to travel and I hate commercial airlines. I have flown in small planes like Cessnas before but never on a jet. It would be very cool to have access to one and to avoid some of the hassles that come with travel.

Castles and jets cost quite a bit of money so in order to make that happen I would need to really step up my game and earn quite a bit more than I have.

Choices and Decisions

Life is filled with choices and decisions. When you take the time to think things through you start to understand the distinction between what you need and what you want. As you figure that out it helps you to determine what choices to make in the future so that your decisions are based upon your standards.

What do you think?