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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

  • About Jack
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  • About Jack
    • Other Places You Can Find Me
  • Contact Me
    • Disclosure

Random Thoughts

Hello, Is This Thing On?

March 20, 2026 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

Some people used to complain about the frequency with which I updated this joint. They used to tell me I was driving people away because there was too much content.

I laugh at that sometimes because that was before Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok and the 10,000 other places that push out content. That was when comment sections were still active and people didn’t run around calling themselves content creators or influencers.

Now there’s so much going on that it is easy to feel like you are dealing with content shock and suffering from overload.

If you asked me which time I prefer I would go back. It was better, more authentic or so I felt and feel. More people sharing with less intent to become internet famous.

I like the additional tools and think some of what we have is better now, but we lost something as we gained othe items and I am not sure it is to our benefit.

Have to ponder that for a while.

Filed Under: Random Thoughts

What Do You Spend Your Energy on?

September 2, 2025 by Jack Steiner 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.

Filed Under: Random Thoughts

I Am Still Here

July 12, 2025 by Jack Steiner 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.

Filed Under: Random Thoughts

Just Another Day

May 17, 2025 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

And so we start with

There’s razors in my bed
That come out late at night
They always disappear
Before the morning light
I’m dreaming again
Of life underground
It doesn’t ever move
It doesn’t make a sound
And just when I think
That things are in their place
The heavens are secure
The whole thing explodes in my face
It’s just another
It’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.

Filed Under: Random Thoughts

A Time For Grieving

April 9, 2025 by Jack Steiner 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.

  • She Saved My Heart
  • Things Bloggers Write About
  • The Kitchen
  • Self Reliance
  • Emptying My Head

Filed Under: Random Thoughts

2025 Is How Far Away From 1980…

January 1, 2025 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

Someone wrote that 2025 is as close to 1980 as 1980 was to 1935 which is to say there is a 45 year time gap between them.

I was born in the late sixties so by the time 1980 rolled around I had long since learned how to write in cursive and like most GenX kids had long been walking myself to and from school.

Had endless summer days in which my friends and I rode our bikes everywhere or took city buses all over the place.

1935 caught my eye because my folks were born in the early forties and so it sounds old.  Though if my grandparents had become parents as soon as most of their contemporaries the folks would absolutely have shown up somewhere between ’35 and ’38.

In concept that could have meant that instead of being mid fifties I’d be in my sixties now and that sort of throws me a bit because life could have been so different.

Maybe I’d be retired now and not a decade away.

My baby is going to be 21 this year and doesn’t intend to get married or pregnant for a long chunk of time to go which is ok with me.

I have told my kids there is no rush and to remember who you end up marrying has a big impact upon the rest of your life so take a minute to figure out who you are before you hook up.

Anyhoo, I don’t have time for a long post tonight but figured this joint needed an update and that time gap caught my eye. Hell, I go back to work tomorrow after having taken some time off and I am sure the new kid will ask me again if I feel old because I was a 20th century baby.

I took him into the gym a while back and curled his body weight which cut down on some of the old man talk.  Might have to bring him back because I can lat pull more than he weighs now too.

The kids say I have old man strength but I tell them it is just 40 plus years of lifting and good genes.

Happy New Year.

Filed Under: Random Thoughts

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