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 April 2014

Sometimes It Is Hard To Have A Home Office

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home office

I have a love/hate relationship with a home office.

You can’t beat my five second commute and I love being master of my office attire. Pajamas, shorts, t-shirts or jeans–it doesn’t matter because I wear what is comfortable.

There are no interruptions from the person in the cubicle next to me. I don’t have to deal with biological warfare, bad singing or burnt microwave popcorn.

Truth is most days I love it and have no interest in going back to having to commute somewhere.

But…

But there are moments where it is more challenging.

Sometimes people have the mistaken and misguided impression that because I work out of a home office I am available to take care of chores or get involved in conversations I wouldn’t be available for if I worked out of a traditional office.

There is no doubt my arrangements provide flexibility that wouldn’t otherwise exist and that I can adjust my schedule to do things during the business day that I might not otherwise be able to attend to.

But I can’t do it every day and I still have to do the work I would have done.

It doesn’t disappear just because I went to the school’s winter festival or some athletic event. If I take two hours off to do those things you shouldn’t be surprised that I’ll come back and work two more hours later in the day.

And you shouldn’t be upset that I am not available for conversations all day long.

Deadlines

We all have deadlines and we all have responsibilities but as a writer I live by deadlines. As a project manager/marketer I live by deadlines and when I don’t hit them I want it to be because someone other than me dropped the ball.

I hate missing deadlines and it rarely happens because I am conscious of my time.

Maybe I am more conscientious about it because I have had to bill my own hours many times. Maybe I am more conscious of it because I know what my hourly rate and it is easy for me to put a number to hours away from my desk.

When I worked in an office I had no problem asking people to let me work because I was on deadline so it is not any different to me to do it at home.

Except for one giant distinction.

The people who interrupt me the most are my family and they are the reason I work so damn hard. They are also the reason why I worked so hard to find a job that had this kind of flexibility.

Work/Life Balance

Sometimes I look back and wonder what it would have been like to have done this when the children were infants and toddlers. Sometimes I wonder how much I missed because I was in that office and or traveling. Sometimes I wonder if it wasn’t easier for me to have been in an office because back then they were always ar0und and now they are in school.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter because I can’t turn the clock back. There is no Delorean or Doc Brown to help me go back or try to send me back to the future.

And that is ok.

I am happy being present. Most of the time it is pretty damn good having a home office. Most of the time the dog keeps me company and if I need someone to talk to he listens.

Hell, he listens better than everyone and as long as he doesn’t see that squirrel outside he tends to be the best kind of companion.

Still I am very conscious of how fast time is moving. The kid that made me a father is a teenager and high school is just around the corner, won’t be long before he heads out and a short blip longer before his sister goes.

Sometimes time moves too quickly.

Killer Whales & Lions Taste Like Chicken

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Type C killer whales in the Ross Sea. The eye ...
Type C killer whales in the Ross Sea. The eye patch slants forward. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Most of you probably don’t know that Killer Whales & lions taste like chicken.  Does that bother you? Are you upset because I told you that these friendly creatures you can visit at zoos and aquariums taste like a common farm animal.

Would it make you feel better if I told you that you can’t tell what it is you are eating because the fur and skin has been shaved off.

Perhaps you’d feel better to know I haven’t got a clue what either tastes like and that I wrote those words because I enraged now.

Ok, enraged isn’t the right word but furious and frustrated are.

This Post Is About People Not Animals

Some of you might wonder if I am trying to take a swipe at anyone here but I am not. I saw Blackfish and I was horrified by what I saw but there are two sides to every story and that movie was pretty one sided.

Maybe it is entirely accurate, maybe it is not.

Maybe my sense of reality is the same as Bill O’Reilly’s book. If you don’t like what I have to say you can just suck it up and accept it.

Or maybe I am just frustrated because my almost teenage son touched on a couple of hot buttons for me and I am torn between shame, anger, frustration and a feeling like how the fuck did I fail so miserably in teaching him about gratitude and life.

Ok, I haven’t failed, far from it but sometimes the people we love the most do the best job at hurting us intentionally or otherwise.

Gratitude and Attitude

It is unfair for me to say he lacks gratitude but reasonable to say a lack of tact, maturity and understanding made for one hell of a poor presentation.

I don’t believe he is any less grateful than I was as a kid but damn it just chapped my hide to hear him talk about his life as being so less than what it should be.

My little man doesn’t seem to recognize I didn’t want to leave Texas and that I pushed myself so hard to get home quickly I vomited from exhaustion.

Twenty-one hours of driving doesn’t begin to describe what I did for the kids and I would do it again because I am their father and there are times when parenting requires a subjugation of personal desires.

Most of what happened during the past five years has been kept from my little rug rats and again, I would do it the same way. They don’t need to be exposed to all of it, but when you have taken a beating for someone it is hard to just smile.

And if you know me at all you know I am not the kind of person you can beat on because I will find a way to overcome whatever it is.

But I would be pleased if that attitude had more gratitude.

This Is Not The Life I Planned On

I didn’t remain completely silent but I tempered my response. He needed to hear that this is not the life I planned on having either but it is the life we have and it is pretty fucking good…most of the time.

Life is filled with a series of moments. I told him we are built to last and that we are built to handle and overcome whatever comes our way and then I told him I am not living where I want to be or how I want to be.

I let that soak in for a moment and told him that didn’t mean I am miserable now because I am not. Truth is I am pretty damn happy, I am relatively healthy and that is crucial.

Health is everything. Maybe life isn’t exactly how I want it but health means I have the ability to actively work on making the changes I want to make and I am.

He doesn’t see the path that I do but I tried to help him catch glimpses of it.

Ask me about my worst day and I’ll tell you it is over. Ask me to give you a list of the worst days of my life and I’ll tell you it is hard to come up with a long list but I am batting 1000 for getting through them.

Been A Hard Week

It has been a hard week and that influences my response to it all. We are in transition and I am a bit worn out by it. Blame that on my not breaking up all I have to do into pieces because that would make a difference.

Looking at it in its entirety is hard, not overwhelming because I know I will get through, but challenging nonetheless.

Just one of those weeks where it feels like I am walking through knee deep mud while carrying a 500 pound backpack.

Still it is sometimes hard not to list everything I would do or could do if I wasn’t concerned about the children.

Some days are like that and some aren’t.

When Are You Old Enough To Buy A Real Car?

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Antique Car Dashboard

I wouldn’t have thought a post about a Fedora would make me write a post about being old enough to a buy a real car but it happened.

Funny thing is I started out thinking about my desire to buy a cool Borsalino and that you can blame on Casablanca, the movie that turned me on to Humphrey Bogart movies.

You can probably attribute some of this to my love for my grandfathers too. When I look at old pictures of them in the forties I love the ones with their hats. Sadly they got rid of them so none were passed down to me so all I have are baseball caps I have purchased and two Fedoras I picked up long ago.

This gets me to thinking about acquiring things that are timeless and well-made. At this point, I don’t mind spending more than I would have in the past, because it’ll be the last time I’ll buy.

There is much to be said for buying timeless and well-made. A while back I started doing that with my shoes and my feet have thanked me for it.

When I moved to Texas my parents came to visit me and I took them down to the Fort Worth Stockyards. Since it was just before my birthday mom decided I needed a cowboy hat so we walked into one of the shops there and bought a proper cowboy hat.

A good hat costs a couple of bucks but the folks said at 44 I deserved one that wasn’t just going to fall apart and so that is what I got.

The drive from here to there and there back again made me think about what I deserve and what I need too.

Cars

Cars are a funny thing. I have always loved them but I haven’t been someone who looked at them as being a status symbol. I have always told the kids that in many ways a car is just a simple, meaningless tool for getting from here to there.

But I have also said there is a difference and distinction that comes with certain vehicles. Sometimes that is based upon whether we have actually gotten our hands dirty working on the car.

When you do that, when you put your hands and your mind to work fixing, tinkering and adjusting something happens and changes take place. You place a different value on the car than you do when you just buy it.

Thing is that most modern cars aren’t really made to be worked on the way old cars were so you don’t see some of that happening like it used to.

The car I drove back and forth to Texas is now 14 years old. It is the car we bought before my son was born, the one that was purchased with the idea it would be the first family car.

There are lots of memories tied into it. It is not the first new car I purchased but it is not necessarily the car I wanted either.

When Are You Old Enough To Buy A Real Car?

When my son was about 10 months old or so I saw a convertible Mercedes and came damn close to buying it. It was a sea change in thought and action for me.

That is because up to that point I had been completely anti-German car and because I had never earned enough to consider buying a car like that.

But on that day money wasn’t the issue because my career had exploded and my pockets were full. The funny thing to me was that for the first time in my life I had enough to buy what I wanted but I discovered that it didn’t really matter because money wasn’t what held me back.

I didn’t buy it because it seemed impractical to own a car that the entire family couldn’t fit in at one time and I didn’t see the need to have three cars. And even though I thought it looked amazing when I tried to picture myself in it I thought I would look like I was driving my father’s car and I didn’t want that.

Time passed, things changed and the age of full pockets evaporated and the idea of driving something fancier dried up because there was no money for it.

But every now and then I wondered about buying something more.

The Influence of Texas

Texas changed many things including my feeling about cars. Some of it happened because a man who is just short of 45 needs a car that provides more support for his body.

I still enjoy taking road trips  but the wear and tear from old seats, road noise and just sitting for hours has caught up with me. And even though I think of myself as being 25 the reflection I see in the mirror makes it clear I am not.

At last I am old enough to drive a real car, whatever the hell that means.

Or maybe a better way to say it all is I have reached a place where I value craftsmanship in what I purchase, not just in vehicles but in everything and am at an age where I seek that out.

Many years ago my father told me when he dies I will get his tools. I told him I was willing to wait a long time to get them and he smiled.

But I don’t think until he had his heart attack that I really thought about what some of that meant to me. I want his tools because these are what he used to build and repair things with. These were the tools we used together when I was a kid and as an adult.

There is deep meaning in those.

And now I find myself thinking about roots and quality and how they interact. More on this in a post yet to be written.

Does Your Writing Ever Bore You?

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Library of Congress Classification - Reading Room

Sometimes I read posts on personal blogs and I wonder if the writer was bored by their own work and if so, why they published it.

I tend to dislike much of what I write but I often post it because it helps me measure my progress. One of the goals is to become a mastery storyteller and that doesn’t happen without a willingness to do the work.

And by doing the work I mean taking the time to read books and do lots of writing and rewriting. That goal is a big part of why you will never find me without a book to read. You may not always see a hard copy but my Kindle app is always filled with a variety for me to choose from.

Sometimes Blogging Makes Me Crazy

Sometimes blogging makes me crazy because I have this push/pull thing going on inside my head. I always want to write with reckless abandon and not a care in the  world because that is where I find the most joy.

Yet there is the goal to build the platform and to continue to monetize. That pushes me to try to visit the path of the rule following blogger because there are some solid pieces of wisdom within it.

My guess is that The Conundrum of Content Creation offers you several paths to success but at varying paces. More specifically if I turned this joint into the premiere location for news/information on How To Write A Parent Blog I could increase my traffic and generate more revenue in a shorter amount of time.

I am sure Soulati would suggest I work on message mapping so that it was clear what people will find here. It is not a bad idea and I haven’t completely ignored it either.

Read the About Me page and you’ll see a pretty good outline of what to expect here but you will also see links to many different types of content. It isn’t just dad blog stuff, there is fiction, humor and writing included there as well.

Does Your Writing Ever Bore You?

Ideally the answer should be no because if you are bored you can almost guarantee the reader will be bored too.

A while back The Shmata Queen told me that I am too hard on myself and that my worst writing is better than what most people produce. It made me feel good to hear it but the standard I set for myself never let’s me forget if I think I can do better.

Writing is so very easy and so goddamn hard.

One of the things I noticed about living in Texas was that it felt like the words flowed more easily and eloquently than they do back here.

Maybe it is because a change of scenery is often helpful for stimulating your mind and generating more ideas and new perspectives. It is a big part of why I want to move back.

I never suffer from writer’s block. I don’t believe in it but I definitely have moments where I hate my words so there is something to be said for living in an environment that fosters a positive feeling.

There are so many stories I could tell, things that I saw or experienced and things that I witnessed. I think about meals at BJs and The Keg, drinks at Saltgrass and there is a parade of images that waltz through my mind.

Limited Feedback

The commenting here has dropped precipitously like it has all over the blogosphere so I can’t use the comment section to gauge feedback and reader happiness like I once did.

My stat software makes it clear that traffic has grown and that people are engaging here. You might not be commenting like you used to but I see visitors and that makes me happy.

But that is part of the push/pull thing for me too.

I am not as shameless as others about self promotion and that has an impact. Most of the guest blogging I do come from being solicited by others and not because I ask.

That is not a bad thing, but it impacts the numbers. If I want to grow I have to make a bigger push to do so.

The funny thing about all this I tell my children they have to learn how to advocate for themselves. I stress the importance of being willing to go talk to teachers and not wait for life to come to them but to take it on headfirst.

Yet I don’t always follow my own advice, maybe I should.

13 New Ways Social Media Hurts Your Intelligence

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Who dunnit?

The moon refused to hide our sins just as the sun denied us our blessing.

Perhaps it shined brightly but all was lost in the twilight of the moment.

Once we had been kings but hubris had stolen our crowns.
Who Dunnit

Several hours ago I watched the ignorance of social media rear its head and pretend to be noble as it attempted to slay the dragon it thought it saw.

Being of unsound mind and a body built for demolition I waded into the fray and rained blows down upon the knights who stabbed a paper tiger, listened to them chant and praise their actions and when I tired of banging heads I left.

Left knowing that I probably hadn’t won the hearts and minds of those I had engaged with. One tried to taunt to me as I walked away by pointing out a typo.

Part of me looked at it and wondered if this was the kind of person who looked at the concentration camps and figured that whomever was in there deserved to be there because they supported the people who ran the camps.

Dark Moods, Children And Murder

Sometimes I kid around and tell you about my shriveled black heart but not now. Now it aches because the children and I talked about why people hate and I did my best to answer questions about genocide.

Hitler came up during dinner and not because he was wanted, needed or called forth. My daughter shared a story from school about Germans and how some people saluted and called them Hitler.

If I told you the full tale you would hear an innocuous beginning and maybe you would understand why I took the opportunity to explain why I don’t find him to be funny.

I wont raise my children to be afraid of people and the world but they can’t afford to be ignorant about history. Look at what is happening in France and it is impossible not to wonder about whether it will spread.

When they attack Jews and draw swastikas on them it is hard not to be both sad and angry. It is hard not to wonder if it wouldn’t be helpful to pay a special visit to some of these areas and demonstrate the consequences of messing with the wrong person.

It reminds me of that line in Gran Torino

Walt Kowalski: Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while you shouldn’t have fucked with? That’s me.

But beating the crap out of those who come after my people doesn’t necessarily remove the poison in their veins.

How Many Did They Kill Dad?

It is a very basic conversation about the Holocaust. It is not the first time she has heard of it but at a hair short of ten it has always seemed distant and unreal, impossibly far away.

I am torn. I don’t want to give her nightmares but I worry and nothing has proven to me a need not to. The hijackers came to the US and used our planes to murder 3,000 people.

Daniel Pearl went to my high school. My friends older siblings knew him.

Members of my family were murdered by the Nazis. I have heard the survivors speak, seen the tattoos.

I believe there are more good people than bad in the world. I tell the children about our cousin’s husband and how his family was part of the Dutch resistance, explain they weren’t Jewish and talk about how they risked their lives.

My son shares some of what he has learned and the kids talk about what they have heard in school. My daughter looks at me, “daddy how many people in our family did they kill?”

Who dunnit?

Most weeks I try to practice my writing by participating with one of the online writing groups. Who dunnit is one of those exercises. You have to use 42 words to tell a story, no more and no less.

Forty-two was Jackie Robinson’s number. I could have related the story to him but that was too easy. Got too many other stories inside and the one about the celestial planets is burning up inside so I had to get it out. Will probably add to it. It makes me smile, helps to provide some balance.

The kids expect me to protect them. Son tells me before bed he has no doubt I would do whatever it took to make sure the family stays safe. I nod my head and smile. I have no doubt that I would but pray I never have to find out.

Later on I catch a couple of glimpses of the social media morons from earlier and I shake my head, wonder if it was worth engaging. Did I help anyone or did I lose a couple of IQ points for nothing.