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 2015

Misty Mountains

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“There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.”Ansel Adams

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Nulla rhoncus elementum rhoncus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Pellentesque a erat velit, venenatis porttitor mauris.

Fusce semper risus eu magna placerat pulvinar. Nullam ac odio non ligula semper auctor. Fusce semper risus eu magna placerat pulvinar. Nullam ac odio non ligula semper auctor. Fusce semper risus eu magna placerat pulvinar. Nullam ac odio non ligula semper auctor. Aenean at dui dui, non scelerisque nisi. Morbi ullamcorper dapibus nisl, ullamcorper fringilla eros pulvinar et. Nulla rhoncus elementum rhoncus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Pellentesque a erat velit, venenatis porttitor mauris.

Flog The Blogger

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destined for me
I didn’t intend to share Nobody Beats The Disease again but after I finished listening to Whiskey Lullaby iTunes moved straight to Streets of Philadelphia and my heart screamed and my head answered.

You might read the words in the picture and those that began this post and wonder whether old Jack Steiner is feeling melancholy and sad and I would shake my head.

Maybe I would choose to tell you a few stories but there is a better chance I’d share the quote pictured below.

Some people have secret feelings.
Some people have secret feelings.

There are boundaries in blogging and though I sometimes use this place to empty the dust contained in the mental closets of my mind it doesn’t mean I’ll share all that lies inside.

I’d call that a good thing and say it is important to retain a piece of ourselves and share it only with those who truly need to know.

And as much as I might want to use some of the darkness or joy I carry to suck you in further and encourage you to become a devoted reader I don’t think it would serve me well.

Make no mistake I am a man who wants more readers and wants this place to be the miracle that moves my world from the mundane to the magical because that would make one hell of a story.

But then again the larger part of me says it is better to do this as I do most things, my way. Sometimes it is smarter and easier and sometimes it is six times harder but it is mine.

So flog the blogger who chooses a different path than those who say they know better. Flog the blogger who looks askance at the Sneetches who race to get their gold stars because they fear to be left out of the race.

Flog the blogger who tells others he disagrees and isn’t popular enough to gain the support of those who could rally to his side to support him.

Don’t mistake that for being bitter because it is not. It is just me writing and sharing a few thoughts.

Some will love me, some will hate me but most won’t have an opinion one way or another.

Not Inspirational
Been sailing through stormy weather for so long now I am not always good at recognizing the calm. Sometimes it takes me a few minutes longer to realize I can take a deep breath and relax.

I work on it daily and have gotten pretty good at being present in the moment in ways I never used to be able to do so.

Found out today that I have health insurance again and smiled so damn broadly my face hurt. I had never intended to be without it but circumstances led to hard choices so I went without for a while so that my kids would not.

Almost hesitated to include that here because it embarrassed me but decided to put it in because one day when the kids read these words now this will help then understand the hows and whys of this particular moment in time.

And if it goes as it should they’ll know part of the reason for the smile is dad recognized it was time to be present because the change marked the start of the change.

One moment in time in which you could almost see the air shimmer and gold dust fall from the ceiling for reasons I don’t understand and label as just because.

More Springsteen

Bruce is singing Tougher Than The Rest now and I am smiling because I identify with the song and love the album. Smiling because part of me feels a little more vulnerable and that is always a sign that I am putting more of myself into these words.

Smiling because part of me feels a little more vulnerable and that is always a sign that I am putting more of myself into these words.

Don’t know if the finished version of this post will make me smile or cringe but part of what I like about it is it feels like there are some layers here and that is always a goal.

It is part of why I like to include pictures, music and quotes because in a perfect world these posts are an experience.

Bruce is singing Walk Like A Man now and I am staring forward and backwards.

I can feel the presence of my father and grandfathers standing next to and behind me. Dad is still around so it is easy to see him there but it is also effortless to feel both grandfathers there too.

If I turn my head I know I’ll see them smile and fade back into the ether so I won’t turn and force them to leave.

My children are down the hall, fast asleep and unaware of how much goes on inside my head at this time of night.

They don’t see me wander under moonlit skies or hear me thinking about the best way to handle certain situations. They don’t hear the racket and rumble of me trying to manage it all and that is ok, they don’t need to.

Tomorrow they’ll ask again if I am really reading two books at a time and roll their eyes when I point out the stack of magazines and suggest if they don’t want to be lazy they try emulating dear old dad.

The  Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride pace of the recent past should be changing soon and things will take on a different sort of pace.

Heart and head are working together now. Gut feelings, intuition and eyewitness operation all in sync.

Time marches on and I march with it.

The future calls and I am off to answer.

How Many First Days Of School Are There

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the horizon

Ask me to provide you with a theme song for parenting and there are moments where I will struggle to choose between O Fortuna by Carl Orff

and the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky.

Those two bring a sort of silly and serious vibe that moves me and ties into A Father Describes Parenting.

I have been thinking about the whole parenting gig quite a bit lately because of the changes that are coming in our world.

With a bit of luck and a lot of hard work I’ll have a new job soon and there is a substantial chance it will be out of state.

It is exciting and I am hopeful but like many parents I have some concerns about how long it will take my kids to adapt.

My best guess is they might settle down sooner because they’ll go to new schools and make a slew of new friends.  I don’t expect that to happen to me and not because I am not going to be starting a new school.

It is a bit more complicated when you are a grownup to find and make new friends not the least of which is I don’t feel much of a need to do so.

I am very lucky and have been blessed with some great friends. Since we have all been out of college for decades now many of us have moved around so it is not new to me to have friends…elsewhere.

Still if the move happens it will be nice to have some local friends so I’ll make a point to work on that.

How Many First Days Of School Are There

Regardless of whether we move or not the children are going to be starting new schools in the Fall.

High School and Middle school–just blows me away to think they are that old already.

Three years ago I wrote about some of this in High Anxiety & The First Day of School but today I find myself reading the post I wrote about my oldest’s first day at school.

I am including the whole thing here for both your and my review. I

t is a prime example to me about one of the things I love best about blogging.

It is a snapshot of a moment in time written by a man who sounds so much younger than I feel now and a reminder to me about how fast this parenting thing really goes.

My Son’s First Day of School

The grand adventure begins tomorrow, or perhaps I should say that it continues. My eldest is heading off to kindergarten.

After much stress and debate we decided to send him to day school. I don’t know who is more excited, him or me.

We spent a big chunk of the day at my folk’s house where we enjoyed a fabulous Labor Day barbecue and talked about what it is going to be like to be in kindergarten.

I told him a little bit about my experience and related how it was way back in kindergarten that I met G.

In a corner of the living room my father, grandfather and I shared stories about what school was like for us.

The kindergarten classes of 1919, 1948 and 1974 recounted tales that in some ways will not be so different from the class of 2006.

In some ways it was rather surreal how some things never change. I began school a relatively short time before the end of the Vietnam War.

My father was a few short years after WWII and my grandfather started during WWI. Not a very impressive comment about people, is it.

Anyhoo……….

We spent a little time getting his school supplies together. There were new kippot to buy, a new backpack, some pants, shirts, a couple of books and some assorted odds and ends.

And throughout all of this there was this little smile on his face and a look in his eyes that made it clear that he is aware that this is a big event.

I suspect that tomorrow is going to be hard for me. He is so very big now. I used to carry this little boy tucked into the nook of my arm. I could hold him and pretend to be the Heisman Trophy. But not anymore.

From time to time he still falls asleep in the car and I still get the chance to carry him in to bed.

Only now when I hold him I feel his feet dangling against the middle of my legs and at 45 pounds he has metamorphed from a light package to something more challenging.

Now on the odd occasions that I have more than a five minute walk from the car to the bed I begin to notice the extra weight.

The baby talk disappeared ages ago. He still makes the occasional mistake. The other day he said that he wanted to be the betterest but the big guy doesn’t ever call me da da anymore.

He doesn’t always want to crawl into my lap to play with his toys. Oh, he’ll still do it from time to time but I see the impact of the older brothers and sisters of his friends and I see him weighing things.

He is more cautious about doing things that mark him as being a baby.

Tonight as he lay down to go to sleep he asked me if Grandpa S. knew that he was going to start school. I said that I thought so and he told me that he missed him and I said that I did too.

And then he told me that he loved me and asked if I thought that my daddy missed his daddy.

He is really starting to understand it all. He gets that grandpa is not coming back.

He told me that he wished that Grandpa was still here because when he learns how to read he wants to read him a story.

I was happy that it was dark because that caught me off guard. My grandfather would have so very much loved to have heard that.

Well, I have rambled and muttered enough. Hold onto your loved ones and hug them tight because time has a way of moving all too quickly.

In a few short hours my little man will walk into class and I’ll head off to work.

If I pass you in the parking lot you’ll forgive me if I don’t look up or say goodbye because I think that even though it is a happy day it is going to be a hard moment.

I read this again and again and smile because I remember it all but at the same time it feels like a different lifetime.

Probably it was and so many of the things I wondered and sometimes worried about happened or didn’t.

In some ways it doesn’t matter because these words you are reading now are proof we all survived and a pretty good indication we’ll continue to do so.

169 Ways To Make The People You Work With Hate You

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imagination and creation
Three years ago I asked people why they felt the need to learn how to make people hate them.

For a while it was one of the more popular posts on the blog and I wondered how many people read it because they really wanted to learn new ways to make their coworkers hate them and how many were just curious.

If you hate the people you work with that much I don’t understand why you wouldn’t make an effort to find a new place to hang your hat, but that is just me.

I played around with trying to make this a funny post because it lends itself to that and I have had success with the funny stuff here but decided I didn’t want to go that direction.

It is not because I can’t be funny either. I received compliments today on One Slightly Used Pump For Sale as well as for some of the material from It Should Have Been On YouTube.

Imagination, Life & Blogging

I suppose part of why I went a different direction is tied into a gut feeling I have about life and blogging right now.

Been living in the land of transition and life changes for a while and it has made an impact as well as taken a toll upon me.

The toll comes from the stress that comes with worrying about how your choices impact your children. It is the fear that comes with not knowing how certain situations will play out and feeling guilty because the consequences of other actions make you wonder if you let them down.

It is mitigated by knowing that you can’t see what the future holds and you never know for certain how something is going to be until you try it.

It is that moment where you take a hard and honest look and can accept that whatever happened is not solely because of your efforts, be it good or bad.

My kids have never gone hungry, been without shelter or clothing.  The two biggest changes in their lives were being pulled from private school and having to move.

If I look at the big scorecard of life they are still ahead of the game so any guilt I feel is my own manifestation.

******

But I have also learned how to visualize the future I want and how to turn that into reality.

Don’t misunderstand, this isn’t about the law of attraction here. I am not discussing whether it exists or not. I am talking about how I used blogging to figure out what I want and what I need.

The benefit of doing that is it enables you to create a real plan for obtaining those things.

169 Ways To Make The People You Work With Hate You

Even though I am not going to provide you with a list I will reiterate something I have said before about how to make your coworkers hate you.

If you really want to do that be the person that makes meetings a waste of time and energy. Make people hate meetings and they’ll hate you.

Hell I hate you just thinking about it.

But since hate isn’t a good way to encourage new readers to subscribe to your blog or keep existing readers around I’ll switch to love.

Do you feel the love now?

Woohoo, I knew that you would and because you do I’ll give you a list of posts you may or may not have read and offer those for your reading pleasure.

Remember I sometimes get creative with headlines:

Why Everyone Hates Bloggers

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reflect
It was almost midnight when I noticed the bedroom light was on and burst in through the door and rolled out the kind of icy glare that does more than make my kids freeze.

That bad boy was the a duplicate of one that made an MMA fighter and his three Rottweilers decide it wasn’t worth finding out if I was that stupid or that capable.

“Dad, I can explain why I am still awake.”

“Yeah, you can and I can explain why it is wrong. Fact is I can answer any question ever asks me and give them an answer that sounds reasonable. Doesn’t mean they should believe or buy it.”

He is fourteen years-old now and he didn’t have to tell me that he was still doing his homework because the Algbera textbook and page full of math problems made it clear.

Nor did I need or want him to tell me about how he had mismanaged his time because we both knew it.

My job isn’t to berate him every time he makes a mistake or to jump on him because he is on the verge of doing so.

Nor am I supposed to prevent him from falling down because if you never learn how to fail you never learn how to deal with adversity.

Friday night we spent several hours hanging out and sharing stories about our lives. I listened to him tell me about the kids in school and how some of them are being difficult.

Listened to him tell me about those who are nasty and those who are not. Listened to him and heard how he is trying to find his people and felt badly because I get it.

His best friends are at other schools now and he is wending his way through a time that would be awkward even if they were all together.

Why Everyone Hates Bloggers

I listen to his story and share some of my own. I want him to know I understand and that I am always there to support him.

But I make a point to tell him he has to find his way because how I do things might not work for him.

“Dad, there are a lot of kids who don’t understand why I don’t like some things. They always push me to explain or ask why I can’t do that.”

I laugh and tell him to get used to it.

“This is who we are. We walk our path and sometimes it intersects with others and sometimes it doesn’t. It is not the easy way but I find it more fulfilling.”

When he asks me to give him an example I tell him a story about why some people say everyone hates bloggers. I tell him about how some people think bloggers are hacks who try to blackmail brands into giving them free stuff and all of the other stereotypes.

“Is it true?”

I shrug my shoulders and nod my head.

“There is some truth in it but probably not as much as some people think.”

He nods his head and asks me if it bothers me that people think this way.

“No, I don’t pay much attention to what others have to say. Some people will love me, some will hate me and some won’t have an opinion. I don’t waste much time on them. Doesn’t mean I never have moments where I am irritated, but most of the time I just don’t care.”

“Dad, how do you do that?”

“Some people are like little dogs that yap at anything they see. Unless they try to bite me I usually ignore them.”

“But what if they try to bite?”

“Sometimes I’ll respond. I am not always good about ignoring them. Sometimes I respond but most of the time I don’t because it irritates them more to be ignored. I could tell people they are sanctimonious assholes who are too stupid to recognize how many people dislike them but there is not much upside to that.”

Dad Doesn’t Block People

I didn’t tell that teenager of mine about how rare it is for me to block someone on social media because he doesn’t really need to know this bit but I’ll share it with you.

If you read Different Is Always Wrong you know it irritates me that people are so intolerant of opinions that differ with their own they’ll block or ignore people they disagree with.

I think it speaks volumes about a person who can’t accept that not everyone believes as they do. I am not talking about hate speech or things of that nature either.

Maturity has helped me refrain from telling idiots what I think of them but it hasn’t always stopped me from sometimes writing or posting something that is for their eyes.

Yeah, it is childish but sometimes I like tossing a grenade their way and not saying anything. Let them wonder if I meant for it to irritate them or if I shared it because I thought it was interesting.

Nine times out of ten it is solely because I thought it would make for an interesting discussion but every now and then…

Using Star Wars To Parent

“Dad, I still want to explain why I am still up. You have no idea how much work I have. I know I could have handled it differently but I didn’t. I want to try again.”

I smile at him and pull out my phone to show him a video he has seen a million times.

“There is no try here. You either manage your time better or you don’t. If you don’t get enough sleep you’ll end up getting sick and then you’ll really enjoy trying to catch up on the work you missed.”

I tell him I love him and that I am proud of him and I walk out of the room. Just before I go to sleep I look at the photo below and smile because I know my kids get it.

Go the distance