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 November 2012

The Write Words For Weekend Writing

by 14 Comments

Don’t challenge me unless you are willing to take what comes with it. Don’t throw down the gauntlet and then cry when you are engaged by someone who doesn’t let up because you are losing or things are rough.

This isn’t just about me although it ties into me.

It is about people who start things they can’t finish and then cry because they get hurt. It is about those who get smacked, slammed and mauled because they bit off more than they can chew and then spend time racing around the blogosphere, the UN or wherever to cry about it.

Victims

I don’t have patience or tolerance for a victim mentality. If things aren’t figure out how to change them.

I don’t claim to be special, profound or insightful. I just know these things because life has kicked, hit, bit and chewed upon me a bit and all I could do was take it or move.

Change is hard. Change is frightening, but it is a part of life and it has to be met head on.

Children

We’re going through some growing pains here. My kids have been learning some hard lessons and it hurts because I can’t take all of the blows for them. I have taken many and will take more but they have to learn what to do when they get knocked down.

They have to learn how to rise after they fall and how to deal with adversity.

Life has been bittersweet for a good long while now and yesterday was a day that made me want to scream with frustration because of things the kids said.

But when I took a deep breath and looked around it was also clear how much progress we have made and that some of what they said is because they are just kids. It happens.

I didn’t react outwardly to their words because they take their cue from my reaction, but beneath a relatively calm exterior there was a lot going on.

Just a few more steps, got to push a bit longer and a bit harder and we’ll get beyond this place.

**********************

This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

Set a timer and write for 5 minutes.
Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spell checking. This is writing in the raw.
Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.

Filed Under: SOC

The Etiquette of Unfriending

by 36 Comments

Smarter men than I go to bed well before midnight instead of well after which might explain why they don’t ponder silly subjects such as whether there should be an etiquette to unfriending.

Or maybe it has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with the kind of silly thoughts that flit through my head round midnight and later.

Facebook Friends

I’d blame the gallon of coffee I drank around 7 PM for being up at this hour but that wouldn’t be entirely accurate as you rarely find me in bed before 1, especially if I know I can grab a solid six hours of shut eye.

Anyhoo, I was tooling around Facebook checking in with the fine folks I had friended and reading about the amazing vacations they have taken, Black Friday conquests and salivating over pictures of meals they pretended to cook for the holiday when I noticed that I had been unfriended.

Yep, some people have removed me from their Facebook friends and now I can’t show them pictures of the fabulous meals I didn’t cook and the amazing vacations I didn’t go on.

And for those who are wondering the answer is yes, sometimes I make up these tales and leave them in my status bar for no reason other than because.

It is kind of fun to find a listing for an exotic cruise and to write about how much fun we had as jockeys in the Great Galapagos Tortoise race of 2012 or talk about how I won a contest and got to spend a night cooking with Bobby Flay.

But the people who have unfriended me don’t get to benefit from these tales and I am left with a million questions.


angrymommyblogger

Unfriended and Unwanted?

Why did they do this? Were they tired of these tales or upset that I didn’t lavish praise upon the pictures of ugly dogs, kids and horrific kitchen remodels.

Were they upset when I made fun of them for voting for Obama/Romney and accused them of plotting to destroy the US of A through some nefarious plot.

Now I can tell there is one man out in cyberspace who is angry with me because I know his wife in the biblical sense of the word but that is not a recent experience. It happened somewhere around 1989 and I can tell him there were a dozen guys after me.

Or maybe I did share that tidbit with him and that is why he is angry.

What Is The Etiquette for Unfriending on Facebook?

I am tempted to write Mr. Zuckerberg and ask him why there isn’t an etiquette for unfriending handbook. Are we supposed to remain silent and just let these people point and click us into oblivion.

It just doesn’t seem right and not because they can’t benefit from my famous recipe for Turducken.

There ought to be a letter that goes out with the unfriending. For that matter there ought to be several choices ranging from the polite “I am sorry” to “your kids are stupid, your wife is ugly and you make me want to get a root canal without the benefit of anesthesia.”

Really, that would go a long way to improving communication and I can assure you better communication is something we can all benefit from. I learned that while watching Mel the chef on Alice or maybe it was Archie Bunker.

It has been so long now who can remember, but it doesn’t really matter.

But Seriously Folks

Ok, I haven’t been real serious here. You could call this a great example of the sort of narishkeit and mishegoss that causes more issues than it solves.

The reality is that there are probably about five people who I would want an explanation from if they unfriended me and that is mainly curiosity. Now aren’t you glad you got to read this and not a serious post about how the holidays are a time to Reflect, respect and recollect.

Sleep calls and I must answer. See you later.

The Cost Of Comfort

by 15 Comments

The news came via email and while it was not a surprise it still made me sad.

“I can’t make it tomorrow, my mother passed away after Thanksgiving dinner”

That’s not verbatim but it is accurate and that is enough to share some thoughts with you in rapid and perhaps random fashion.

What is The Cost Of Comfort?

I am jammed for time so this won’t be elegant, eloquent or as thoughtful as I might like, but that is not a reason not to share these with you.

I need some new dress clothes but have been dragging my feet about purchasing them for several reasons, not the least of which is I don’t have to wear them with any sort of regularity. That makes them low on the priority list, but there are two others that jump out at me.

  1. I am in between sizes. Diet and exercise are slowly but surely having an impact so I haven’t wanted to buy anything new.
  2. Time of year- cash is tight and there is a long list of things that are not wants but needs.

Vanity plays a role here. Most of my “gear” is worn and tired looking. The two suits I like best don’t fit and the ones that do are like said, worn.

So I ask myself about comfort, is my comfort all that important. The point of attending a funeral isn’t to look good for others or myself.

Yet, there is something to be said for wearing clothes that fit and don’t make me look like the homeless guy around the corner.

Quality of Life Now and Later

My friend’s mother had breast cancer and hadn’t been doing well for a while now. They live out of town so they do their best to come home regularly to visit and the cancer made it more important to spend quality time as often as possible.

I don’t think we are ever truly ready to say goodbye to our parents, no matter how old we may be. It is always nice to have mom/dad there to talk to.

No one expected things to move this quickly. They didn’t expect this to be a long drawn out process but they didn’t expect it to end so suddenly either.

Yet I can’t help but think about whether this might be a blessing of some sort. The quality of our entire life is important and many times we see the end reach a place and point at which dignity is a memory and pain a constant companion.

Sometimes I think about what we do to help prolong the lives of those we love and I wonder whether we are doing it for them or for us. What is the cost of comfort and whose comfort are we looking out for.

And now I am going to go fight the hordes to pick up that pair of slacks. The cost of comfort is mitigated by the comfort I will try to provide for a friend.

Don’t ask me if that is rationalizing away my own vanity or a reasonable explanation ‘cuz I am already gone.

You Made Yourself Look Stupid

by 10 Comments

As you know I am part of the cadre of people who are blogging every day throughout November. Some refer to it as Nablopomo but I don’t because every time I hear/read that I want to get a shot of penicillin or lecture someone on why they should practice safe sex.

A short while ago someone sent me a note in which they cried crocodile tears about how I made them look stupid online and asked me to apologize. I said no.

They hoisted themselves on their own petard and I didn’t see the need to help them come down from the tree they climbed up. When you throw rocks at me you can’t complain if I set a fire at the base of the tree or use a chainsaw to saw through your perch.

I am a curmudgeon with attitude and if you poke me with a stick I will take it from you and give it back to you in a manner befitting your station.

Anyhoo, you made yourself look stupid. You challenged something I said and when I cited my sources you threw mud at me and called me names. It didn’t have to be like that.

You could have taken a moment to look at the link I provided and you would have learned I didn’t make up any of the things I said. They are facts that are taught in high school civics. Maybe you slept through that particular week of instruction or spent that time working as a circus clown.

I really don’t know and I don’t care. I just know that it is never smart to start a fight with someone you don’t know for the sole purpose of trying to make yourself look better.

If you contact me again with this sort of ranting nonsense and demand for apology I will share the contents of the email and the chronology of this event with all of my readers and upon all of my social media channels.

That is a promise and not a threat. I don’t want to do it because I am bored with this topic and would prefer that we agree to disagree about what happened. That is the mature thing to do and it is perfectly fine to agree to disagree.

What is not fine is wasting my time because you are an ignorant ass who is either illiterate or too lazy to Google the information you should have read before telling me that I didn’t know what I was talking about. I did, you didn’t and now you made yourself look stupid.

Aren’t you a real peach.

How To Give The Gift of Gratitude- Thank You

by 10 Comments

Gratitude Journal
Gratitude Journal (Photo credit: limevelyn)

I want to give my children the gift of gratitude.

I want them to wake up and be thankful for all of the good things we have in our lives. I want them to be thankful to live in a place where they know that how far they go in life is in large part under their own control.

Because our attitude influences everything we do, touch and who we are.

Evidence of a Life Well Lived

My son told me he is sorry that things are hard now and asked if there was anything he could do. I smiled and said no, because things aren’t hard, they are challenging.

That is not spin, it is truth. Transitions can be awkward and this is no exception.

I showed him the picture above of the things we sold at the garage sale and pointed out that is evidence of a life well lived. We didn’t sell those items because we needed cash to survive, we sold them because it was time for them to be used by other people who needed them.

I reminded him about why I sold a pair of shoes to the homeless guy who showed up. It was a question of dignity and that meant it was better to charge him a couple of bucks than to just give him the shoes.

The best part of the conversation was seeing the understanding in my son’s eyes- he got it.

It Is Not Always Easy

It is not always easy to be grateful, even when you have ample examples of how much worse it could be.

Family and friends have been fending off rockets and wondering if the bus they are boarding is going to be visited by terrorists. It is not something I worry much about here.

I see the homeless guys on the side of the freeways and hanging out in all sorts of other places. I don’t worry about being homeless. Sometimes I get irritated because I don’t have many of things I want, but I have most of what I need.

So I try to remind myself about the reasons why I should be grateful and to think about ways to give that gift of gratitude to my children.

Thank You

I don’t know if I will get back on here tonight or not so this might be my one opportunity to say thank you to you and to wish those who celebrate Thanksgiving a very happy and healthy holiday.

Life has been busy lately so I haven’t been around to comment and visit as much as I would like to but I hope to adjust that soon.  Got a lot more to share and say but I am off to play Chess with my son. Someone has to show him that his old man may be a step slower on the court but hasn’t lost a thing on the board. 😉

87 Triberr Tricks You Never Tried Twice

by 14 Comments

After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her. – Adam’s Diary (Mark Twain)

There are only two ways to commit murder: with intent to wreak havoc and terrorize or meekly as if by accident.

I prefer the former over the latter. If you are going to snuff out a candle than do so in a fashion which makes clear you have no second thoughts. It is the honorable thing to do.

Honor is the reason I whacked 876 words- two posts for some of you, but only one for me.

Headlines Should Deliver On Their Promise

I have a love/hate relationship with headlines. I read posts like This is why I am not reading or tweeting your blog post and nod my head because the answer to the question below this ‘graph is yes:

“Do you want to increase the readership of your blog by 400% in just one easy step?”

Yes I do. I want to build something bigger, better and bolder than what I have here.  One of the ways to do that is to craft headlines that compel people to click and read.

Yet the great contradiction of my career is the desire to do whatever the hell I want and to rail against the instant gratification society by going against the grain.

It is part of why I sometimes twist the “list post” by using ridiculous numbers like 982 Ways To Monetize Your Blog or 69 Reasons Why Fathers Make Better Lovers.

The truth is they work. They bring the readers and some of them actually hang out long enough to read the entire post. I attribute that to solid content and to intermixing headlines that deliver on their promise.

Do What You Say You Are Going To Do

Twenty-Five Links That Will Make You A Better Writer/Blogger isn’t linkbait. There are 25 links you can use to become a better writer/blogger.

Most of what you will find in there comes from almost 9 years of blogging and a couple of decades worth of work as a professional writer. Take it for what it is worth. It works for me and it might work for you, or it might not.

I don’t think I am wrong but what do I know, Bloggers are Insecure.

There Are No Triberr Tricks

Unless I am mistaken I have been a part of Triberr for almost two years now. I started out in Anubis have had the chance to watch Triberr grow exponentially, at least I think it is exponential. Could be wrong about that too, I am a writer not a mathematician.

Anyhoo, I have probably written about seven or eight posts about Triberr and not just because it is one of the few ways I get Dino to visit the blog now.

It is because Triberr has been one of the most effective tools I have used to grow my blog. It has increased my exposure and reach and it is part of why many of us are friends, but it would be a mistake to say all it took was signing up.

What made the difference was time spent engaging in multiple places with people. It is responding to comments here, leaving comments on your blogs, tweeting with people and using other social media platforms too.

That is not to say I haven’t conducted tests and experiments because I have.

I have tried large tribers that had little targeting and smaller tribes that were very targeted.

You Don’t Need a Niche

You don’t need a niche to be successful or maybe that is just me. If you are among the regulars you know I blog about blogging, parenting, writing, sports and social media. I write fiction and share it here too.

This blog is a success. It generates revenue and has led to multiple business opportunities.

But I want to build something bigger.

What Do You Want Out Of Blogging/Social Media?

Saturday night I sat down with my son and had a long talk about life. He wanted to know who I wanted to be when I was his age. I told him that way back in the spring of ’81 I wanted to play baseball for the Dodgers and basketball for the Lakers.

We spent a few moments talking about why it didn’t happen and what has happened since. I told him that he doesn’t need to make a decision now as to who he wants to be but that in life it helps when you can make plans for some things.

That is probably better applied to people like us who aren’t 12. It leads to the question I pose here frequently: What do you want from blogging/social media? If you are trying to monetize your blog it is the kind of question you need to answer.

When you know what you want you can create a road map for achieving it.

Gratitude

It is time to wrap this post up but not before I say I have created a mental list of things I am thankful for. Me, the guy who used to make fun of people who said they have an attitude of gratitude is grateful.

People power social media. Triberr introduced me to many more people. If I were a mathematician I might create a fancy looking formula but instead I’ll leave you with this:

P+SM= 87 Triberr Tricks You Never Tried Twice