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 September 2014

Make Time For Blogging & Improve Your Sex Life

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www.thejackb.com

Some things make me so angry I want to kick the dog and drown the cat. I want to drive down the sidewalk and run over all of the pedestrians and then for good measure do something far more heinous than all of those put together.

I would share that in more detail but the guys in legal are having a fit now and I am required to tell you that I don’t really want to do any of those things. I have taken literary license and created a fake facade that is designed for the sole purpose of capturing the attention of my readers.

Hmm…I wonder if the guys in legal have a problem with me saying I want to give them all a colonoscopy without the benefit of anesthesia. Of course the guys in legal aren’t all male and at least two of the women gave birth naturally so they aren’t afraid of the aforementioned colonoscopy. Well, I am not impressed by them because everyone knows that our great grandmothers would give birth and then be back in the fields an hour later.

They make those women in legal look so damn lazy.

Make Time For Blogging & Improve Your Sex Life

Yesterday I talked about Dad’s Barbaric Yawp and shared one of my favorite quotes from Dead Poets Society. It is the one that Apple borrowed and plastered all over the airwaves.

One section of that quote keeps bouncing back and forth in my head like some sort of crazy Ping Pong ball.

“That you are here – that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”

It makes me ask questions:

What will my verse be? What do I want it to be? What serves the greater good? What makes me happy and fills my heart?

Ask me why I write and I’ll tell you I am compelled to do so that there are words and stories I cannot keep inside. This is part of why I am a writer.

It is natural. It is part of me. It is easy and I enjoy it but I ask myself if there is more. I plumb the depths because I sense opportunity and possibility lurking in the depths and the darkness.

Somewhere beyond the insouciant dad blogger who writes about the secret to better sex or the guy who produces link bait like Spit Or Swallow Always Means You Have Time To Blog is a guy who has something to say. What I wonder is if maybe that is what I was thinking about in the Barbaric Yawp post.

It is more than the mockery I reserve for those who say they don’t have time to blog. I toss that out there because it generates pageviews and because I don’t buy the argument that people don’t have time to blog.

It is not that they don’t have time it is that they won’t make time. There is a difference.

We make time for things we really want to do. Sometimes when things are hard we avoid making time to engage in those things.

Ask For What You Want & What You Need

Sometimes life provides you with the opportunity to get more than what you need and you can ask for what you want. If you want to be happy you need to figure out what you need. When you understand this and have identified what brings you joy you can develop a plan to obtain these things.

If you are among the long time readers you might have noticed the flow here feels different. Some of it is because I have taken excerpts from older posts and included them in this one.

It is similar to something my son and I do with his Legos. Sometimes we take parts and pieces from multiple sets and use them to build and create something new.

That is part of what I am trying to do here. I am in the midst of change and transition and am hiking on an unmarked trail. There is joy in the journey and excitement in blazing a trail where none existed before but there is uncertainty too.

Part of what I am trying to do is find a way to see through the fog that has obscured my vision. My gut tells me if I surrender to change and open my heart to possibility opportunity will come from it.

So I am looking at the limitations I have always set for myself and doing my best to wipe them out.

It might sound like some sort of new age, self help woo woo crap but I can assure you it is really not. It is me having made some big decisions about what I want, what I need and who I want to be.

This is just one part of the journey. I am curious to see where it leads and what will come from it. If nothing else I expect it to turn into one hell of a story and what more can a writer ask for.

Oh and about making time for blogging, my advice is as it has always been. Tell your internal editor to STFU and just write. Put the words down on paper. Sometimes you’ll create crap, sometimes it will be fair but every now and then you’ll catch lightning in a bottle and that is always worth the risk of producing content that is less satisfying.

Dad’s Barbaric Yawp

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Walt Whitman
Walt and I need to talk.

Almost midnight and I can’t sleep because thoughts are flying through my mind. I have this image of witches flying around in circles at some sort of witch jamboree.

My mind is noisy and I am fighting to find my center, to quiet the screaming of the jet engines inside that destroy tranquility. The internal editor is screaming too, arms flailing around because he can’t find the words.

But I know the source of his gesticulating is fear that the words I place here won’t have a flow or rhythm to him. That fucking madman is far too self conscious and while he worries about his image I am pushing ahead because what powers my posts is momentum and if I don’t keep moving inertia will kill my panache and the machine that powers these fingertips will cease to work.

“I too am not a bit tamed—I too am untranslatable;
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”
Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman

It would be false to say fear doesn’t push me to keep moving but it would also be false to say it is the sole motivator.

If I were given the opportunity to speak with my good friend Mr. Whitman I would pepper him with questions about his work. I want to know how he found his barbaric yawp and what moved him to sound it.

I think about these things more often than I once did. Maybe it is because I can hear the tick-tock of the clock. My gut always tells me my time on the earth is far from done. I’ll see many more sunrises and sunsets but that never eases the feeling that I need to run harder than I am or I won’t get it all done.

It frustrates me to feel this way because it conflicts with my desire to be present in the moments. If we spend our days running like hamsters on a wheel it becomes more challenging to enjoy what is happening now and that conflict is a battle I fight each day.

Time isn’t unlimited but then again my daughter will be ten once and I won’t ignore that. Can’t ignore that. I will do my best to be a part of it all and to savor the time as I have it now.

But if I spoke with Walt today I would tell him about the things I feel in my gut, the stuff I know based upon the tickle in my mind and not based upon science or education. I would ask him about how to write about these things, how to take what I see internally and produce it externally.

This is what I am meant to do. I am meant to write. I am meant to take words and find ways to turn them into stories.

Meant To Do Meets The Bills

If you ask me to introduce you to the things I fear I could do so. I could share the list and tell you about the sick feeling that sometimes accompanies a few of them.

Today the one that bothers me the most is trying to find the way to do what I am meant to do and still pay my bills. It is the concern about how to turn the words that flow from the fingertips into a stream of income that makes it easy to support my family.

It is following that yellow brick road into the Emerald City and not allowing the fact that the wizard is a man to stop me from following those dreams. We all have our regrets and I can’t stomach the idea of being beaten by flying monkeys. In the past I might have tried to figure it out on my own.

A lack of trust or faith might have kept me from finding my own scarecrow, lion and tin man to help me but not anymore. These days I have learned to ask for help and to trust I’ll get it.

What Will My Verse Be?

Remember that internal editor I mentioned above?

He is the one who worries about whether you’ll read these words and consider them pathetic, ridiculous and or embarrassing. I believe he is the one who is holding me back. He is the one who sets limits upon what I can or cannot do.

Today I remind myself again of the need to kick his ass and for dad to sound his own barbaric yawp.

If I buy into the lines Robin Williams shared in Dead Poets Society (and I do) than I have to keep pushing ahead and do my best to contribute my verse. I have some ideas about what I want it to be but I suspect my friend Walt would say we won’t know until I am gone.

And now that I have placed these words upon paper the noise inside my head is silent and I am ready to shut my eyes and seek slumber. In the morning I’ll set off on my journey again and do my best to sound and follow my yawp, It is what good father’s do.

John Keating: We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, “O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless… of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?” Answer. That you are here – that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”- Dead Poets Society

What Happens If You Die Tomorrow?

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The ISS with Dragon and the Center of the Milky Way Galaxy

“I dare you to look at yourself through my eyes and see what who I see when I look at you.”

What Happens If You Die Tomorrow?

I have no reason to believe I am going to die tomorrow or any time soon. Based upon genetics, desire and force of will I expect to be around for another 90 years or so.

If you know me well you know I am not kidding when I say that if Death showed up I would kick his bony ass or die trying. But that doesn’t stop me from wondering about life or asking hard questions because the goal is to be able to say I lived a full life. The goal is to do whatever I can to ensure that when I die people don’t spend time talking about all that I could have done if only I had more time.

Unless something incredible happens there will never be enough time to do all that I want to do. There will never be enough time to do all that I am capable of doing.

Some of you might think it sounds like hyperbole, arrogance or some combination thereof but I don’t think it is either.

It is recognition that much of what we accomplish in life comes from making the effort to make that happen. It doesn’t mean there aren’t limitations because there are but most of the limits we live with are things we apply to our own lives.

What Could I Do?

Ask me to give you a list of things I could do and I’ll tell you I could be a doctor, researcher, teacher, writer, scientist, politician, athlete or philosopher.

Ask me to elaborate and I’ll tell you that is an incomplete list and that it is not set up in order of preference or likelihood. It is just what came to mind first.

I haven’t any doubt about my ability to go to school and obtain the education that would allow me to take coursework that would lead to my receiving a piece of paper that established my expertise in any or all of those fields. My experience with obtaining my college education proved to me much of it is contingent upon my willingness to work and study hard enough to pass the exams.

Give a person who is willing time to do what is required and they’ll find a way to figure it out and get that degree. That is part of why I am not impressed with degrees and titles. I know a lot of people who obtained multiple degrees but only a few of them strike me as being truly outstanding but that is a different topic altogether.

The point here isn’t to diminish or demean nor is it to prop up or praise.

It is about recognition that our time is finite and that if we want to fill our lives with activities and people that mean something to us we have to work at it.

Effort is required.

What Scares Me

I wonder if what scares me scares you too. I wonder if some of you wake up and wonder why you are spending time with certain people. I wonder if you wake up and wonder why you do what you do because it doesn’t make your heart full and your soul sing.

I wonder if you’d tell me that I am talking about a good game but not making the changes in my own life that are required. I wonder if you would tell me that this is woo woo, new age crap and that it is not practical to talk or act like this in real life.

You might be right.

Maybe I am full of shit. Maybe I am a 45 year-old man who is stuck between youth and older age and is wondering where his place is. Some of that might be accurate.

Hell, it might all be accurate but experience has taught me to believe that money isn’t everything. Maybe having more and losing it has made me more cavalier than I sh0uld be.

Or maybe I have figured out more clearly what I need and what I want.

What scares me more than anything is reaching the end of my life and seeing a ton of regrets because I didn’t let myself live the way I want and need to.

I am just as frightened by the idea of saying I wasn’t selfish enough as reaching that point and saying I was too selfish.

Dad Is a Soccer Coach

We lost our second consecutive game today.

It is my second time coaching my daughter’s team but not my second time coaching. I have been down this path multiple times before. Walked this road enough times to have a clear vision for how to teach the girls to play the game and to know what sorts of tools and resources we need to be successful.

Watching them play today I made mental notes of the good things they did as well as the errors and I thought about how we just don’t have enough time to practice.

If we had more time to work on things they wouldn’t make the mistakes they made with spacing and the defensive breakdowns wouldn’t occur. They wouldn’t tell me that it is hard to play when it is 103 because they would be better conditioned and we would have prepared for this.

Staring out the window at a starry night it is hard not to think about how much better I could be at coaching if I had more time. It is hard not to wonder where I failed the girls.

There are a few who irritate me to no end. They are mouthy little know it alls who don’t want to listen and work hard because they have bought into the hype their parents have sold them about how working harder during the games compensates for lack of practice time.

I understand that some of them have lots of other activities. Piano, ballet, homework, softball and soccer make it impossible for them to focus their attention on any one thing so it is spread out.

They don’t know that I get it. They don’t know that I have thought about what would happen if I had the time to focus solely on certain activities and how I believe it would make a significant difference in skill and ability to execute.

But our time is limited.

My daughter runs herself into exhaustion. She chases after the ball and players with single minded purpose and I smile. I smile because I love her effort. I smile because watching her proves that there must be some sort of genetic thing going on. I have never told her to play this way yet she plays as I do.

It offends us to stand around. It irritates us when exhaustion takes away our ability to perform as we think we should.

Our time is limited.

What Happens If You Die Tomorrow?

I don’t know how not to worry or think about this and I am not sure that it really matters. I only know that I am the guy who is driven to live a certain way.

If I should die tomorrow I won’t have done all that I could or accomplished all that I want to. It will never be enough. There will always be challenges to overcome, things to see and moments to share and experience with those I love.

All I can do is try my best to make peace with that and accept that I have done my best.

And maybe that will be enough.

What I Miss

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Cradle of Stars

Editor’s note: I wrote this a while back on a different blog. Since that blog isn’t self-hosted I figured it is safer and smarter to put a copy here to protect it.

One of the strangest things to happen me was to realize that what I missed most about Ann was her friendship. It might sound silly to some of you but you have to understand that it surprised me.

Surprised me because I have been blessed with many friends who are the kind of people that others want to be. Stalwart companions that you can always rely upon. They come through when times are hard and are there when times are not.

They aren’t the fair weather sort and that is something that has always touched me and been a source of pride too. If you wanted good role models you would find them among my crew.

I mention this because had you asked me what I thought I would miss I probably would have listed other things than her friendship, but maybe it is a sign of maturity now that I don’t list the “x-rated” material first.

Ann was my best friend. She knew me in ways that no one else ever has and maybe no one ever will. There was a depth to our friendship that you rarely if ever see and that was what everything else was based upon.

We liked each other. We made each other laugh. That is one of the things that I miss about her, that laugh. Or the sound she used to make when I would surprise her, the way she would suddenly inhale. I sometimes called her “airsucker.”

People used to remark upon it because they thought it referred to something else and I used to just laugh. I never said yes or no, never told them whether they were right because it didn’t matter.

What I miss is the way she and I were able to create our own world. We could be in the middle of a crowd and get lost in each other. It wasn’t something that disappeared either. There was never a honeymoon stage. The lust and physical need for each other never disappeared or dissipated.

Looking back I attribute that to that friendship and to the enormous trust we had. I miss talking to her about everything. It sounds silly, but if she thought I could do something it always gave me a little boost, a lift.

And that comes from someone who hasn’t ever lacked confidence in his abilities.

Maybe that is why I am so torn. Maybe that is why I have this stutter/start thing about trying to reconnect and rekindle.

There is this part of me that wonders about a million things. I have this image of seeing her at the office. She is downstairs eating lunch under a bright blue sky. I walk over and sit down next to her. We don’t say anything and just eat our lunches.

We finish eating, stand up and walk away holding hands- no words have to be spoken because that magic connection has never left. There is a part of me that consistently wonders what would happen if I kissed her. Would that electric feeling shoot through my body again.

I know what my heart says, but my head says don’t be a fool. Don’t write these things down because you sound crazy. Don’t open the door and don’t look back.

But you don’t become a writer unless you know how to dream. And the very best dreams come from the heart- source of passion, power and magic.

For now we’ll wait to figure out whether to follow my heart or listen to my head. But I’ll admit that sometimes in the dark of the night when I stare at our moon I say her name out loud and strain to hear her saying mine back.

Children & 9/11

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Flip through the pages of the blog and you’ll find multiple posts about my experiences with and on September 11.

You’ll see the posts about how I watched the towers fall on television while my ten month old son built and knock down block towers. You’ll come across the story about one my oldest friends and how a ton of his colleagues died that day.

Depending on what post you read you might come across my story about how I was supposed to be at the Javits Center for a trade show and how if I had gone I would have stayed to meet with clients.

But this year I am not writing or thinking about that because my kids are old enough to have begun asking some very pointed questions. Old enough to try to reason and rationalize why horrible things happen and to ask me what we can do.

What Answers Do I Give Them?

We have had some of these discussions before. We have talked about 9/11 and what happened. We have discussed why Martin Luther King was assassinated and talked at length about the Holocaust.

It makes me sad to think about how horrified they were to hear about gas chambers and to learn just how many times humans have lost our humanity.

They don’t know anyone who died on 9/11 but they know their cousins do. They know their cousins know children who lost parents, grandparents and aunts/uncles.

They know our country was attacked and that it is possible something could happen again.

We don’t live our lives in fear. They don’t wander around wondering if something is going to happen. They know that there is a greater chance of getting hurt by falling off of a bike or out of a tree but they also know sometimes things that are improbable and horrible can happen.

When I heard them talking about what they had learned in school and heard them say mom and dad might not be able to protect them from hijackers part of me wanted to scream.

In part because it is true. In part because after Sandy Hook my son told me not to worry because he sat by the door and figured he could be out the door before he would get shot.

I heard that and wondered what the fuck has happened. When did things turn. When did life get so mixed up and crazy that this kind of thing could be said and not be a joke.

When they ask questions I wonder about what answers to give them.

How Honest Should I Be?

I am certain they really don’t walk around in fear. I am confident they spend the overwhelming majority of their time just being kids but there is a silent scream of frustration that I never voice.

That is because I want them to see dad doesn’t walk around in fear because I don’t. And I want them to feel like my protection wards them from all harm everywhere.

I know this is not true but I need for them to be confident that I will do whatever I can. When my son asks me if I would be willing to kill someone to protect our family I say it is not a question and then I wonder again how we reached such a place.

When these conversations come up about horrible events and my ten year-old says she thinks people are too smart to do these things now I wonder how honest should I be.

How much of her innocence should I take to try and make sure she is protected and how much should I protect to see that she isn’t hurt in a different way.

The world is still filled with magic and mystery. I still believer there is far more good than bad but it is during these moments where we remember those we lost that I find myself wishing that for a little while I could put these kids in a bubble and just let them live without these worries.

Are Pinterest Analytics Killing Your Blog?

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Hieroglyphics inside the tombs of the workers who built the Valley of the Kings.
Call me crazy but I don’t think the pharaohs worried or wondered about how many impressions, pageviews or unique users would be attached to the hieroglyphics in their tombs.

And it wasn’t because they operated in an offline world that preceded the digital one we live in by thousands of years either. Nah those ancient dudes didn’t wonder or worry because as gods on earth all that mattered was being certain their stories were told with the proper amount of grandeur and respect.

I suppose you could debate the importance of quality of content versus marketing because the blogosphere isn’t like Field of Dreams. There is no guarantee they’ll come if you write it.

Ask me for my professional opinion and I might tell you about the dumbest way to get arrested because some of you haven’t figured out the importance of focusing on quality content because it doesn’t matter how good your marketing skills are if you can’t hold the reader’s attention. And if you don’t recognize the significance of that you might very well be the person who gets arrested in the manner listed above.

Want to know what happened to Egyptians who did a poor job of painting hieroglyphics?

"A Workman's death"

Sadly those guys didn’t have unions or labor boards to protect them. On the other hand they did have hammers and rumor has it they inspired Pete Seeger to write If I Had a Hammer. Bet my dear Shmata Queen didn’t know that little historical nugget.

How Does This Relate To Pinterest Analytics?

I am glad you asked and I shall answer. A while back I was doing the blogger content versus marketing dance which is a fancier way of saying I decided it was time to try to increase readership here and I began researching ways to do it.

Pinterest kept showing up on my radar screen as being an effective way to generate more traffic so I decided to include it in my social media strategy.

So I started looking for images that I thought would add something to the stories I told in my blog posts and would also make people want to pin them.

Time passed and I started to see an increase in traffic but I didn’t have as strong a handle on what was happening on Pinterest as I wanted to. I wanted to see what sort of activity was generated on Pinterest and whether that encouraged people to move from Pinterest over here to the grand old sailing ship of the dad blogosphere, TheJackB.

There was only one problem with that. I didn’t have access to Pinterest analytics so all I was able to see was how many people came here but I couldn’t tell what the hell they were doing on Pinterest.

Fortunately that was a short hiccup and was solved when Pinterest gave me access to a business account and analytics.

Take a look at the screenshot below and you’ll see some of the fine information I received from my analytics.

Pinterest Analytics
What I see in the shot above is that I have managed to carve out a small presence on Pinterest but relatively few of the people who visit my boards are coming back to the blog.

It doesn’t provide me with enough information to determine how much crossover traffic there is. I am relatively certain that some of the readers of the blog also hang out on Pinterest with me, but I can’t provide you with hard data.

Are Pinterest Analytics Killing Your Blog?

Sometimes social media participation feels like we are all a bunch of hamsters running as fast as we can on a giant cyber wheel. There is a constant buzz and push to try to secure as many followers/readers as we can and that can be dangerous for blogs and bloggers.

Dangerous because it is easy to become overextended, easy to find yourself chasing and responding to the latest shiny object.

If you have set things up so your blog is supposed to be your online hub than those shiny objects can hurt them as well as help. That is because we all have limited time and resources so you have to be strategic about where you spend your time.

Sometimes looking at analytics can be helpful because it provides data you can use to modify your strategy and be more effective. The key is to be smart about how you use them and to not let those numbers push you into not spending your time wisely.

Be careful kids, don’t fall down the rabbit hole and get lost in the shiny objects. They don’t always yield the results you want. Bloggers don’t always need another ebook . It is a marathon and not a sprint.

And now if you will excuse me I think I need to send the Egyptian government an invoice for services rendered. My ancestors built the pyramids and never got paid. It is time to collect.