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

Jack Steiner

What Do You Spend Your Energy on?

by Leave a Comment

I updated the blog where I began my blogging career for the first time in months.

If you look at it you’ll see I took at a look at a post I thought about revisiting last January and a brief story I once started.

I’ll share the 20 some words I used there for those who don’t want to roam the net.

Eyes close, lips brush…time stops. Eyes open…empty room…Empty heart. Hope that echoes of the past become reality of the future. #loveburns

It got me thinking about an important question What Do You Spend Your Energy on?

What people, places, activities and things occupy you? Do they deserve your attention? Are they energy vampires or things that give back more than they take?

Do you walk away feeling better or worse than when you started?

The guy who started blogging wasn’t quite 35 and has now started the back half of his fifties. Life is so different and yet in some ways so similar.

But the one thing that has changed is my sense of time. I always hear it clicking and I am aware the endless runway isn’t endless any more.

So now I review who and what gets my attention.

12 Years Ago

by Leave a Comment

Twelve years ago I sat on a balcony 50 or so miles away from here imagining what the future would look like.

I had attended a celebration at The Keg in Fort Worth followed by an after party that gave me an idea for what things could look like down the road.

Twelve years later some of what I imagined has come to pass and some of it seems improbable if not impossible. Can’t tell you if that is the best or worst outcome because you can’t see the future with the sort of clarity one might want or at least I cannot.

People who swore they would be part of my life forever have chosen to walk upon other paths and I have let them go. Spent lots of time trying to chase and or carry them but they didn’t want that. They gave up on the good, the beautiful and I am sure did so because they convinced themselves there was ugly.

Can’t say ugly wasn’t there and that challenges didn’t exist because you find those things in life. Some people choose to walk with you through the fire and to take on the good and the bad.

Sometimes they choose to turn their backs on those who were always there for them. That is a them issue and not a me issue.

I can’t make anyone do anything. It was disturbing, disappointing and hurtful, but that is how it goes sometimes. It is there choice and their loss.

Truth

Been involved in what feels like an endless stream of conversations about what truth is and isn’t. It is exhausting to be constantly engaged in such things but it seems to be par for the course now. If it is not MAGA repeating 47’s endless lies it is Blue MAGA lying about Israel, Zionism and Judaism.

I keep telling myself this too shall pass but it feels like it is taking extra long time for such a thing to happen.

It is problematic to see so many adopt this position of truth being malleable based upon their tribal definition of what the facts are.

It is a dangerous way to go about life because some facts aren’t open to interpretation or adjustment. That particular statement irks me more than I can tell you because it is a pandora’s box of nonsense but there is a philosophical case that could be applied.

But I am not going to take that on here, not now and maybe not ever.

Probably something SQ and I might have discussed but she is on her walkabout and may not find me because I am no longer standing in the places and spaces I once occupied.

Makes me sad to say it but again that is life and sometimes you have to do your own thing for a bit or a lifetime. One never knows.

Going to wrap this up with a link to The New Normal so I can use it as a reference point for something different later on.

Will probably post this on Facebook just to see if it gets any traction. I doubt it, but sometimes I like to test things out.

I Am Still Here

by Leave a Comment

I am still here but yet I am gone but not like Glen Campbell sings here.

Still haven’t figured out what I want to do with this place. Most of the regular crowd has moved onto other places and I can’t tell you if it’s because they got busy with life, the content slowed down or if it wasn’t of any interest any more.

Though I can tell you some people actively chose to remove me from their lives so from that perspective I know exactly what happened.

But I am not prepared to shutter the shop nor say there is not more to do so this will stick around. Maybe it is grief, maybe it is a change of priorities, maybe it is a whole list of things.

Doesn’t matter because for now this is how it will be. Some days you might not find any updates and sometimes you might find multiple.

Give it time and the answers will come for all of us.

Just Another Day

by Leave a Comment

And so we start with

There’s razors in my bedThat come out late at nightThey always disappearBefore the morning light
I’m dreaming againOf life undergroundIt doesn’t ever moveIt doesn’t make a sound
And just when I thinkThat things are in their placeThe heavens are secureThe whole thing explodes in my face
It’s just anotherIt’s just another day

Just Another Day– Oingo Boingo

Still in the midst of a transformation of body, mind and spirit. Still running with the moon but maybe with a better sense of where we are going to end up and by we I mean me, myself and I.

Got a vision in mind and am walking with purpose and focused intent towards it. Who I was is gone and who I am going to be is yet to be found.

A Time For Grieving

by Leave a Comment

The wise men of life said long ago there is a time for all things and I can’t disagree with their words for I have seen it proven multiple times.

Maybe it is because I have reached a time for grieving and find myself staring at the moon, not knowing whether it is time to run with it or simply howl. Not knowing which will assuage my grief but mostly certain that time will help me heal.

Can’t decide if I want to put pen to paper and see if that will help release what lies beneath the surface or let it run its course in other ways.

So we look at music and find our buddy Bruce singing Cautious Man and recognize something that touches the soul.

Billy felt a coldness rise up inside him that he couldn’t name
Just as the words tattooed ‘cross his knuckles he knew would always remain

Can’t help but move on to Emmylou again singing Goodbye while the memories take me on a journey and I think about things past and present.

Was I just off somewhere
Or maybe just too high?
But I can’t remember
If we said goodbye

Reminds me of the time I ran into someone I used to run with along with a guy I automatically disliked and named “placeholder.”

Wasn’t sure if the universe was playing some kind of sick joke or if it was just dumb luck but I knew I needed to create some distance. Cuz I  I knew that if I was face-to-face with him there was a chance I would manhandle him in the kind of way no man ever wants to be handled.

He would be a rag doll and I would be the bear.

Won’t lie and say I didn’t want to ignore my better angels and to let myself slip back into a man I had once been but who I had given up being.

Maturity has its gifts and sometimes they include recognizing a time for grieving.

So maybe this is the moment where I rediscover a new purpose for this place.

Revisiting The Past

So I am continuing to tear this joint apart while I update, adjust and pivot. Don’t know where it will take me or what it will look like yet but I think I’ll find out.

In the interim here are more links to old work that will probably stick around for a while but may end up getting deleted, hard to say.

Time Marches On

by Leave a Comment

Time marches on whether we want it to or not. SQ is off doing her thing, maybe with a placeholder or maybe without.

I have been doing mine, wandering through time and space on a journey I never expected to be on but sometimes feel I should have anticipated.

Sometimes I think about whether it is time to reach out and touch someone with a handwritten letter or if I ought to just pack it all up and let sleeping dogs lie.

Everyone and everything has a life span and sometimes the best you can do is just let go or so people tell me. Some of them have accused me of not being able to do so but they seem to ignore the long list of those left behind.

I may take a minute to let go but when I do it is usually the end…forever.