Blogging

There is something about The Ecstasy Of Gold from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly soundtrack that touches me.

Today it set off an echo of thoughts and ideas in my head that reminds me about a place in my heart I locked up a while ago.

These thoughts pinballing around my head have caused some ideas to shake loose and fall off of the shelves where I had placed them.

The time has come to dust them off and do more than say I’ll tend to them one day.

They live in gardens that have been forgotten and are overgrown with weeds and things that obscure the beauty inside.

Write With Your Heart

I haven’t done a good job of writing with my heart for a while now.

Haven’t followed the rules of the blog by sharing the deep, dark and personal stuff the way I used to do it.

Sure you can say I have been busy and distracted and that this is why I haven’t but it is not entirely true.

I got tired of feeling like I was getting beat up and beat down about a variety of things so I just stopped writing about them.

You might ask if that means I didn’t follow through with my mantra to live your dreams and not dream you life and the answer would be no.

I never gave up on it, but I did stop writing about some of it.

Stopped putting pen to paper or hand to keyboard because of that aforementioned beating.

That twenty-something I used to be long ago would have never done that. He would have screamed at the world that he could take whatever was dished out and then proved it by taking it.

I can still take whatever comes but I no longer need to prove it to anyone so I figured it was time for a different approach.

But I made a mistake by not writing the same way, made a mistake by pulling back farther than I should have.

Time to get drunk on writing again and dive back into the stories I used to write. That sentence would read better if it was “The Stories I Write.”

It is time to write with the heart again.

Sometimes blogs go bad and we the humans that run them find ourselves scratching our heads and or kicking and screaming because technology refuses to act as we think it should.

That’s what happened here.

Can’t tell you if the problem started last night or if it was today because way too much has happened.

What I know is that when I updated this joint to the latest edition of WP it gave me the finger and tried to kick my ass.

I don’t take kindly to that sort of treatment from people and even less so from machines.

I raged against the machine but tried to be smart about it.

Tried to stay calm and follow the same advice I give my children about effective problem solving and perseverance.

If you are reading this then I suppose I ought to present this as proof of my success in both resolving the issue and in doing so in a semi-timely manner.

But I would be lying if I said I wasn’t tested or frustrated by this blog choosing to go bad.

I am supposed to the rogue. I am supposed to be the maverick.

Not the bleeping blog.

But sometimes things happens.

Sometimes life happens.

Roll With The Tide

I have to remind myself to roll with the tide and to use the power of the waves to push me forward.

Doesn’t make any sense to fight against such a mighty force as the sea because given time it will always win and it always has more time than we do.

Given that the Traveling Jack show is about to roll out another tour it is even more reason to work hard to not fight the elements.

The smart man lets the wind power his sails and saves his arms for when the seas are calm and he truly must row.

Got to be the smart man now, got to save my strength for when I really need it.

So much good stuff going on now, so many amazing things about to happen. Sometimes we fail to recognize how the ordinary can turn into the extraordinary overnight.

In-And-Out

Life is going to be very busy the next few weeks so I am not sure how much time I’ll find to be around here.

The goal is always to update daily but there may be some moments where I just can’t get it done.

If you are a new reader the good news is there are almost 10,000 posts floating around here so there is plenty of material to read.

You can find some of it on the About Jack page or alternatively you can point and click your way through some of the links below:

Words Are The Death Of A Blogger
An Uncertain Certainty
Four Generations & A Wedding
The Best Thing My Father Ever Said To Me
1 Foolproof Way To Become a Better Writer
The Story Of A House- The Final Days
He Died A Hero
Twenty-Five Links That Will Make You A Better Writer/Blogger
Of Dads and Daughters
The Greatest Dad Blogger You Never Heard Of
Mean Girls Come From Mean Moms
Two Things That Are Killing Twitter
Reciprocity In Blogging
Save The Last Dance For Me- 75 Years of Marriage
Grandpa
Donuts

See you soon,

Jack

Don’t mind the clinking and clanking or the dust because it is just a sign of men working.

The 17 of us who occupy this one body are trying to figure out what plugin has decided to stop working because the blog mutiny hasn’t been put down yet.

It is disappointing to find out that our authority is being disrespected and that some of the finest posts located anywhere in the blogosphere aren’t displayed as we wish them to be.

That because posts like Love Between The Lines have pictures or quotes that add depth to the story but the images aren’t showing.

It is a disruption in the force that I cannot ignore.

These words and the posts they live on and in mean something to me.

Some more than others, enough that I can’t rest.

Yet I have other things I must attend to.

What The Cynic Says

The cynic that lives inside my head says it doesn’t matter because so many people skim through posts or use a reader that doesn’t allow the page to render as I wish.

He says it wouldn’t matter if people could hear the clang clang clang of the trolley or the siren song because they would be distracted by the chaos and clutter that surrounds us.

That dude says you wouldn’t notice if a gorilla danced through the room because you’d be too busy updating Facebook, pinning and tweeting so it doesn’t matter.

But there is another part of me that says it is time to ice the bad attitude and ask what happens if a couple of people read the posts on the blog.

Don’t they deserve the best experience I can provide?

And what about the new readers that stumble into this joint for the first time?

Those guys don’t know a thing about me and if they come here during the plugin mutiny what they’ll find are some giant spaces in between paragraphs.

Without pictures it will be vast white spots like they stumbled onto some arctic wasteland.

I took one giant step today towards the future I have been dreaming of.

Did my best to walk with authority and to look like I had been there before and if I am not mistaken my efforts will be rewarded.

It is too soon to say for certain and given a certain amount of paranoia I am not willing to say much more about it for fear of jinxing things.

What I will share is I was more than disappointed with the reception I received at home.

I shared what happened and there was no excitement from any quarter, no well wishes or “thank you for working your ass off to make life better for us.”

Just sullen attitudes and questions about whether I had thought about what I am doing.

I didn’t tear doors off of the hinges or blow the roof off of the joint but I wanted to. I wanted to unload a roar the would make a lion cringe and scream with frustration.

But I thought about the Game Called Fear and asked myself if this was where some of the pushback was coming from.

And so I decided it might be best to keep my thoughts to myself and give the fine folks around me some time to think about the things I had shared.

Won’t lie and say I wasn’t disappointed but it took some of the edge off of things.

How To Do The Right Thing

Sometimes the answer to the question about how to do the right thing isn’t based upon black and white choices of wrong and right.

Sometimes it is a cloudy pool and the only thing you can do is stare into the murky depths and decide to take a chance.

The blog is slightly broken and the mutiny continues.

I have a couple of ideas for how to fix it but none are particularly satisfying.

Can’t say if it is because during an age of instant gratification I am frustrated at having to work or I am exhausted by other things.

I just know that I’ll keep picking and poking and hoping that the combination in conjunction with my natural tenacity is enough to see me through to the other side.

Morning has broken and I am exhausted.

That is because I just fought off the Canadian 993rd Polar Bear Army and the seven Englishmen who were offended because I disagreed with their opinions.

Told the Angry Canucks that I love our little brother to the North and think the Monopoly money they call currency is cute.

Most of them were too polite to say I offended them but that didn’t stop an angry Habs fan from throwing a handful of Looneys and Tooneys at me for saying PK is overrated.

Last but not least let’s not forget the Man U fan who didn’t think it was funny when I asked him to speak American.

He ranted for a moment damn near lost it when I told him William Wallis should have won the war and burned the nation to the ground.

Guy tried to accuse me of promoting genocide but I eviscerated his remarks with a few comments ab0ut the empire and then for good measure made fun of his football team.

In theory that elevated my troll rating to somewhere above hated but below despised.

I’ll let you decide whether a man who shares the story about a thief who breaks into a home and cooks a pork roast in a Kosher kitchen should be taken seriously.

Or maybe I should say I’ll let you decide how seriously he should be taken because someone who speaks in third person and uses the ‘Royal’ We to describe parent blogs as a cure for insomnia might have some issues.

Then again maybe issues isn’t the right word, maybe problem is a better descriptor.

Because my problem is that I find a ton of your blogs to be devoid of humor, emotion and substance.

Maybe it is because some of you are so desperately trying to be noticed by brands and other blogs you tear the soul out of your writing and publish sterile nonsense that won’t hurt or offend.

You publish posts about the great product you got for free and limit or avoid real criticism.

Not every product is amazing or great.

Some of them suck or have things that suck.

I don’t care if you write sponsored posts provided you are authentic in your writing.

If it is great there is nothing wrong with saying that but then again there is nothing wrong with saying that it needs some work.

Constructive criticism is a good thing. If I read your review I want to know what you think and not feel like you were nice because you hope to get more crap.

Tell me you love the life size teddy bear costume but that because of how it is made you crapped down the side of it in the outhouse at the fair.

Show me the raw and authentic side of your life and I’ll nod my head and cheer you on. I’ll tell you that being the father of teens and preteens is really freaking hard.

I’ll say The End Of Goodnight Kisses was hard and that I wasn’t completely ready for it.

I’ll tell you that the kids have figured out that I don’t have all the answers and come up with really good questions.

Heck, there is a lot I’d like to say and share assuming that people are listening and or reading.

Thing is I am not sure how much of that is really happening any more.

Engagement & Noise

I won’t bore you with a long rant about engagement levels have changed since I began this gig.

Won’t spend a lot of time talking about what was and or offering hypotheses about content shock and or whether people are just tired in general.

I’ll just say that my traffic numbers are down a bit but not so much that I expect engagement to have plummeted the way it has.

And I’ll say the first thing I do is ask myself if my content is simply boring the readers.

Some of that is to be expected but I also know from conversations with others that similar things are going on across the blogosphere.

And I know that as I mentioned I simply stopped showing up at some blogs because the real and authentic content I like is non existent.

You don’t have to write for me, especially when I say that I write first for me and then for you.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention why some places see me less and less.

It is just not that interesting anymore so I am looking for new places and spaces.

I figure people do the same with their evaluation of this joint.

Don’t mistake this for my desire to go back in time because I am not trying to turn back the clock, but it would be nice to see a new beginning where the content and conversation were more interesting.

I don’t know, maybe it is just me.

Got to run now, the Polar Bear army is back at the base of my castle.