Too much input, too much noise, too many conflicting priorities, not enough time, everything moving too fast, progress way too slow.
Thinking through it tonight the word “quagmire” came to mind.
I understand that quitting isn’t an option. But it would be nice to have a little bit of progress.
And a little bit less stress and Catholic Puritan work ethic guilt.
Filed under Deep Thoughts
Hissy wouldn’t start up on Tuesday, just made those clicky noises. It wasn’t clear that there was any cause for it, no lights left on or anything else to drain it overnight. It just was about 99% dead.
It’s almost five years since we bought her, so it’s not that much of a surprise. And it was a pleasure to see how easy it was to get to the battery, remove it , and replace it. On my 20+ year old minivan you have to disassemble half the engine compartment to get at the battery to begin with. Honda made it easy.
That’s the good news.
But what it got me thinking about was the fact that we didn’t have any warning. In fact, Hissy just went in for her annual work a month ago and they did their normal “1,823-point courtesy check-up” to make sure everything was hunky dory (and find things that weren’t so they could charge us to fix them) and this didn’t get flagged. In addition, today after fixing that one of the wiper blades started to shred and fall apart. Shouldn’t that have been found in an all-points inspection as well?
Just to be clear, I don’t bring this up as an indictment of the dealer’s service department. They’ve done real well by us recently and I’m not unhappy. But I do see a parallel with this and what’s going on with the world, or at least how I’m perceiving it. (Or maybe my brain is doing pattern matching and finding coincidences where there really aren’t any.)
But this whole situation where you can know that there’s a potential issue with A, B, and C and you do the regular maintenance and you check to make sure you’re good – and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, shit goes sideways anyway? I get it, I’m not an idiot, I understand that we’re not eliminating problems, just lowering the odds, but jeeze Louise, it’s annoying!
And “the world” right now, where we’re already leaking oil like a sieve, have two flat tires, the engine’s making some awful squealing noises, the radio won’t play anything other than elevator music, the windows won’t roll down or up, and the air conditioning is just blowing hotter and hotter air? If we’re already in that condition, how fast can the next big breakdown be and just how bad can the consequences be?
Seriously, might be time for a major tune-up and oil change. And maybe a whole new pit crew and set of mechanics!
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Politics
Say something silly about hypothetical, rhetorical primates and they go out of their way the next day to prove they exist and they’re in charge…
Between the deadlines both scheduled and spontaneous at both the office, the hangar, the home, and the world, plus the aches and pains of getting through this decade, plus the gremlins that are inhabiting my computer hardware, plus…
I’m sure we’ve all had those days.
I’m sure we’re all having a lot more of them these days.
That’s probably going to get worse in the next five weeks, and I don’t have a lot of faith that they’ll get better a whole lot after that.
Maybe in February. Or March. March would be nice. Maybe a trip to Tempe Diablo in the middle of the month…
Again, I’ve wandered. My apologies.
Perhaps sleep will help. Remember sleep? It was so nice…
Hang in there. One foot in front of another. It’s not how many times you get knocked down, it’s how many times you get back up! (I suspect the smarmy schmuck who came up with that one never, EVER got knocked down.)
Just be there for one another, be there for others when they need help, ask for help when you need it. We’ll get through this.
But that printer may get chucked into traffic if it doesn’t get its shit together tomorrow.
Filed under Castle Willett, Deep Thoughts
Sometimes I guess I just need to write, knowing that there’s a message in there someplace, but being too tired, too close to the problems, too confused, too swept up in the chaos to find the optimal path to salvation. But one thing I got out of some training at both Annapolis and Pepperdine was a technique for dealing with such situations – MOVE. Not panic, not random motion, but get your ass in gear. Make your best choice, be ready to change direction if you get new or better information, but avoid paralyses by analyses.
So let me ramble a bit and see if my muse can guide us toward an actual point…
One of the reasons that these thoughts are dwelling tonight is because do-or-die deadlines have been met and, for the moment at least (I’m well aware that this can change in a heartbeat) I’m not seeing any additional do-or-die deadlines on the immediate horizon. Meeting those deadlines has involved working a lot of hours right through what should have been a four-day holiday weekend, plus some 20+ hour days that had me up until 3AM or so this week – but the deadlines have been met. So I can breathe. And come up for air just a little bit.
It’s not like I have nothing to do. There are myriad other things that got pushed onto back burners, both at work, at home, at the hangar, and in my personal life. And it’s not like hitting those do-or-die deadline tasks was antagonistic or confrontational. Quite to the contrary. The people I’m working with now are supportive and wonderful. Making the move last October was the luckiest and best career move I’ve ever made. But in the end, by nature of the beast, my shoulders were where the burden fell (and will fall again in the future) and mine is the responsibility to get ‘er done.
The pressure and time requirements can be significant, the outcome uncertain, the anxiety levels high. But the feeling of accomplishment when it gets done? The kudos from people who I admire and enjoy working with? Those are significant as well.
Now, an ever so brief pause. Or at least a chance to ease it back out of overdrive and off of the afterburners for a couple of days.
There’s still this truly annoying, nagging, urgent voice in the back of my head that’s telling me that I have to optimize, and maximize, and be extremely efficient. How do I take advantage of this pause to catch up on the highest priority items off of those back burners? How do I gain an advantage and not waste the opportunity? When what I would truly like is the opportunity to waste away, to not think for a bit, to catch up on some recreational reading, to watch “Hamilton” again (I can’t believe I’ve only watched it once on Disney+!), to do something mindless for a couple of hours like crushing those cans in the garage for recycling, or take a walk with my camera (wearing a mask, socially distanced of course) to take pictures of things outside of my yard.
I think it’s a matter of balance. (I might have said something along these lines a few hundred times before, but I guess I need to remind myself.) Read a few chapters in that book that I’ve been neglecting for weeks, but also get caught up on some stuff for the hangar that’s past due. Watch “Hamilton” again, but also get those backups done and take a look at that hard disk that’s getting glitchy. Crush those cans, but also spend a few hours sorting and filing that increasingly threatening pile of loose documents in back of my desk that’s making it time-consuming and frustrating to find anything quickly.
Remember that there’s good in the world. The NFL season started tonight, and my beloved Chiefs pretty convincingly won the season opener. The three-minute long trailer for the new “Dune” came out and it’s freakin’ SPECTACULAR. I’ve got a big stack of new CD’s to burn and listen to, new music to sort through looking for new additions to my “best of” playlists.
Don’t despair. I know it’s so easy today – friends online let me know today of an acquaintance who lost her battle with depression. The fight is hard and there are days when we all wonder how much more we can take. I can’t be proud of the fact that I’ve yet to come that close to the end of my rope – I prefer to be grateful, knowing that darkest hour could be out there lurking somewhere.
Don’t forget. It’s just over a year ago that my dear friend Sandy passed away suddenly and totally unexpectedly. I’ve been thinking of her a lot this last week especially. I can talk to her in my head whenever I want, but I can’t get any answers. But for every “what if” question there are happy memories to offset the sorrow.
In summary, I guess the message for myself from this moment of reflection (remembering Tonio K.’s lyric from “American Love Affair, “No one’s let her take the time to think at all, much less think twice”) is to cut myself some slack, take some down time, but don’t take too much, and don’t forget to tell people that you love them. They may really, really need to hear it, and some day you may not get another chance.
Balance.
But keep moving.
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Paul
It could be that I’m the slowest and stupidest person on this particular bandwagon, but…
…do you read any of the fine print, or even the not-so-fine print at the bottom of your grocery store receipts?
I usually don’t. Unless there’s something that I want to check (“Did I get that 3 for the price of 4 special on Lucky Charms?”) I usually don’t look at it at all other than possibly to record the total.
But today…
So it’s not-so-small print. “Recall Notice – You may have purchased the product listed below.”
Let’s get real. Their computer gets our customer loyalty card account number every week so that we can get that special when we buy five boxes of Cheerios and pile up those fuel points to use to get gas. Their computer knows EXACTLY what I bought. Their computer knows what I bought, what minute I bought it, and what product was out on the floor at that time. Their computer is giving me this warning because it’s 99.999% sure that I bought that recalled onion.
Three thoughts:
First, on one level it’s creepy as hell that they can do this while on another level (from someone who has designed databases and written programs in my sordid past) this is trivially easy so OF COURSE they can do this! When you buy Brand A detergent and you get a coupon for Brand B, do you think that’s an accident?
Secondly, given that ability, it’s pretty great that they’re giving us this warning rather than just having it buried out there in a two-second news segment at midnight on a channel I don’t watch or buried off in an online news article from a source I don’t pay any attention to. That’s very helpful and I guess I should be reading the receipt more often, right?
Finally – WHY THE HELL DIDN’T THEY TELL US SOONER? If we’re going to take it as a given that they have all of this data, I’ll guarantee that they have my phone number, my email address, my home address, my mailing address, and probably my shoe size, inseam, and current blood pressure readings. We’ve already eaten the possibly contaminated onions, probably ate them two or three weeks ago. If they found out about this sometime weeks ago, instead of waiting until now to have something stuck on the bottom of a three-foot long receipt, why couldn’t I have gotten a text or email or phone call weeks ago?
If I’m going to sacrifice any semblance of privacy and sell my digital soul to the big corporate grocer in the sky, can I at least ask to get some efficiency and timeliness in the one small benefit that I might get out of it?
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Paul
Remember when every day was a whole lot like every other day and there was a serious boredom factor involved and we wished for a little excitement?
Yeah, about that.
Let’s get back to a little more boredom, a little less stress, a little bit more routine, a little bit more predictability.
Is that too much to ask?
The critters are doing their part. Look out in the back yard – the lizards are lounging, the mockingbirds are mocking (it’s right there in their job description!), the finches are finching, the bunnies are bunnying…
How about we humans get with the program? Before the powers that be just reboot the planet by sending in that 900 gigaton iron ore meteor at .99C to solve the problem once and for all.
I know that the “Giant Meteor 2020!” bumper sticker is funny, but can I request “Boredom/Ennui 2020” as the ticket I would fully support?
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Politics
If this isn’t symbolic of this entire year, I don’t know what is.
Practically, I was “playing” with the camera trying to get my astrophotography in better focus, then trying to take a picture of the lens settings using my cell phone when I got it right. That was the theory.
In reality, not only was I having ongoing problems with the astrophotographs being out of focus but the photos I was trying to take to troubleshoot it were also out of focus.
It was very meta.
And it occurred to me that it’s symbolic of this entire year, like a waking nightmare where we pray we’re dreaming because that would mean that we can wake up, but we know that it’s not a dream but we have to wake up from it anyway. Nothing makes sense, but we’re being bombarded with emotions and overwhelmed with a roller coaster ride between terror and joy, desperation and hope, wondering if every moment of love will be our last while knowing that every moment of hatred and anger will be followed by more, sooner or later.
Time to make the reality we’re desperate for, to do the work no matter how hard, to run the race no matter how long.
If we don’t, we’ll die.
Or worse.
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Photography
I’m not 100% sure where I was, but I thought I knew at one time. I might have been wrong. Or I might have forgotten. Maybe I left myself notes. Maybe not.
And I’m not 100% sure where I am now. Or which way I’m heading.
I’m not 100% sure where these words come from. I think that I’m 100% sure where this image comes from, but I’m not 100% sure what it means.
I described it twice today as “trying to run a marathon while hip-deep in molasses.” That’s fair, I think.
But while that might all be incredibly frustrating (it is), I will not stop running.
That’s one lesson of the marathon. You can get carried off in an ambulance, and your time may suck and not be what you wanted, but you will not quit.
No matter how much you just want to take a little rest, sit for a few minutes, and see if maybe that leads to a quit.
No.
When in doubt, keep moving.
Filed under Art, Deep Thoughts
Sunday nights seem to be the worst.
The whole world’s going crazy and it’s getting harder to hold on to a sense of balance. So much going on at home, trying to just hold on to a sense of normalcy in our own bubble. So much to do at work, trying to carry my weight and help where I can for those who need it. So much to do at the hangar as we’re shut down but still trying to survive. So much to going on across our country as actual forces of evil are trying to divide and destroy us from within.
Am I doing enough? Or am I doing too much and will I recognize the straw that breaks the camel’s back? Or does that whole “you’re stronger than you know” thing still apply and I need to buck up, get my ass in gear, and do even more?
Overlying all is a growing anxiety and fear over the COVID-19 virus. We’re still healthy, but know folks who aren’t, and have seen just how bad it can be.
Where’s the center in all of this? Where’s the balance point? Or is there one, or is it constantly shifting and moving?
There’s a little bit of relief on the weekend as we can force ourselves to make time to relax, to watch a ballgame or movie. But even there I feel a constant dread, a guilt, a pressure that time is being wasted when I watch that game or show. Which I know is wrong, but which in turn just feeds into the cycle of angst.
Baseball is back, which is good – but I can’t help but feel that the other shoe is going to drop any day, with a whole COVID outbreak that could devastate a team, teams, or the league. Hockey and basketball return this weekend, and pro football is less than six weeks away. Who even knows if we’ll get college sports in the fall.
So much uncertainty, so much stress, so much impending doom. But tomorrow we’ll tackle it all again and do our best. Mainly because we really don’t have any choice. As the saying goes, “The only way out is through.”
But Sunday nights seem to be the worst.
Filed under CoronaVirus, Deep Thoughts, Sports
It’s Sunday night.
The weekend was…not sufficient. Disappointing.
Last week was…difficult. Frustrating.
The upcoming week will be…unknown. Anticipation.
The good news is that we all have tremendous potential to make wonderful things of tomorrow, this week, this remainder of this month, the remainder of this year, the remainder of our lives. If we have the strength.
The bad news is that we may be facing tremendous forces opposed to us, both intentionally and otherwise, and the race may never have an end or even a chance to catch our breath. Our strength will be sorely tested.
I was thinking this week of Grant Imahara. And Jim Henson. And Stan Rogers. And listening to “Hamilton” brought all of those thoughts together. “Why do you write like you’re running out of time?”
Indeed.
Filed under Art, Deep Thoughts, Photography
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 