ROLEY

Here’s a reminder that functional doesn’t necessarily mean correct. I had a link in the sidebar for YouTube that you’ll notice is no longer there. Turns out that when you click the link, it treats it as if it is a video, and tries to bring up that video in a lightbox. When you create a sidebar menu from WordPress Pages, it’s doing what it’s supposed to. Hat tip to the guy who told me the link was broken.

To fix this, I need to get more under the hood than I have in years. You may remember that this used to be a Squarespace site. If I can keep this exact look, it might be again. WordPress themes are so damn clunky sometimes. I tell you, there’s more on the backend of this theme than I think is necessary for how minimal I want it to look.

Time to make it correct.

I got rid of X(witter). I don’t listen to news or political podcasts anymore. If I want to hear what’s going on in Congress or the White House, C-Span is a primary source. I have plenty to do during a day to doomscrolling social media. I finish what I have to do during the day and I find I have no time to sit on social media.

I’ve been able to create because I’m taking the time to do that first before I do anything else. I let stuff go. Amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t care about anything that doesn’t matter.

Social Media Warriors. Keyboard Commandos. People who don’t know how to human.

Chaos Agents, bomb throwers, soundbite seekers, world burners.

This is what we’re dealing with if you let it in.

Do we need to? That’s the question.

Here’s something to think about: Did the anonymous nature of Social Media make it harder for us to let stuff go? Hell, even work from home might play a role. The cocooning we’ve done the past few years may have weakened our ability to human. So we lose our filters and we say what we think without giving a rat’s ass about the effects.

We all might be an island, but we’re all islands on the same damn planet. We need to remember that.

Here’s something I forgot from the corporate world: If someone has a job that centers around one thing, without which they would have no purpose, expect that they will fight like hell to keep that one thing to themselves.

I forgot that’s a thing.

When I offered to help someone by doing that one thing one time before they arrived, that person taught me how to do the thing, and then added several steps to the process that I am unable to do, so that I am unable to do the thing.

This is the only thing this person does.

It took me a minute to let that go and not take it personally. It’s not personal. Not to me. It’s deeply personal to that person. Let them have it. It’s not worth the fight.

Just get on about your business, and thank your lucky stars that your job doesn’t revolve around one specific task.

Right?

“When two control freaks fight, one is killed and one is injured, but nobody’s giving up a goddamn thing.”

I think that’s in The Art of War, Cubicle Farm Edition.

As long as there is an older generation hanging on to what they know, there will always be a conflict with a younger generation that sees a new path clearly.

Even my generation is not immune. We were quite aware of what we were going through, but we need to know that the new children are the ones we’ll be spitting on and as much as we might like to break that cycle, it seems like this is just a circle of life kind of thing.

The best we can do is Our Thing ™, and let them do Their Thing ™.

And so it goes.

There are times when I wonder whether or not the whole economy hangs on by a thread, that thread being ‘the way we’ve always done it’. Uncertainty and unpredictability throws the status quo for a loop.

I’m not sure that’s the way a global system should work. I am sure that’s the way it’s designed.

If anything, the Work From Home movement proves that we don’t need to look a certain way to perform. But of course, that causes another problem. I’ve talked about this before. If we’re not in the office, then not only is the company wasting money for office space they’re not utilizing, then all the other things around that office suffer. The gas station, the coffee shop, the fast food restaurants, the bars. The folks that are supposed to be making the money at the worker’s expense are taking a beating.

You’re not doing as you’re told. You’re a slow learner.

“You must try harder. It’s not easy to become sane.” — O’Brien

Standards could also mean professionalism. That’s how the Boomers and older try to dress it up.

If you want to be considered a professional, then be professional. A colorful swath of fabric around the neck is irrelevant.

There’s been a lot of talk about ‘standards’ lately. Many people of a certain age are lamenting the loss of standards. They are also crying about kids on their lawn, I suppose.

They’re not mad about standards. They’re mad that a new generation of people aren’t listening to them when they stamp their feet and yell that it’s always been done a certain way, and opt instead to come up with a new way to do it.

I hate to be dark about it, but eventually the annoyance will cease. Luckily, it will never have stopped us from the work.

I guess there’s a broader lesson from my little OBX misadventure. I had a vision for what I wanted, which turned out to be beyond my knowledge of the tech I had in front of me, my imagination always appears to be beyond what is possible at my skillset.

The lesson is that If you’re going to do it, then start with what you have and what you can do. Then work your way up.

Now all I need is a plan.

Famous last words, right?

Recently, the wife and I drove to the Outer Banks. I love the Banks, I’ve been going there off and on since I was 17 years old. I’ve watched it grow, and I’ve watched some places decay. The water park where I worked got destroyed in 2003 and never rebuilt. Still, I would put up the drive through the Pea Island Refuge as one of the best drives in the country.

On this occasion, I used my iPhone to capture a POV, the intent was to drive al the way to the Hatteras Ferry to Ocracoke. Then, on the way back, stop at the various places of interest like Hatteras Light, the decaying Waterfall Park in Rodanthe, Bodie Island Light, and various places in between and vlog using my Akaso GO Action Camera. Great plan, or so I thought.

Everything started to go off the rails at 8 AM, when my alarm went off and stopped my POV recording as we were leaving Rodanthe, then every ten minutes after as I refuse to believe I pressed Stop and continued the snooze function. Then, none of the shots I took on the Action Camera were all wrong, I failed to take into account the fact that it is a wide angle lens by design. So, returning home and licking my wounds, I decided to produce the POV video from Nags Head to Rodanthe, and decided to eject on the vlog.

Lessons learned: Turn off the damn alarm, and try using the Cam to get a better Idea of framing before moving to production in bright sunlight.

One of the things that I’ve been dealing with since 2020 is a huge dent in my self worth. More fool me for being the kind of person that ties my self worth into a job, but there you go.

The fact is, I lost nothing simply because I lost a good job telling stories. I was telling stories before that. I’ve been telling stories since I was a kid. The only difference between what I was doing before I got that job was that I learned a new way to tell those stories. Just because one person with a red pen decided I needed to be laid off didn’t change the fact that I learned a new thing.

What I failed to do since that time was continue to tell those stories in the new way I was taught. I felt like I failed, but I really didn’t fail. It was simply that a person who had the power to decide who should be laid off picked me based on some criteria that I wasn’t privy to. It’s also possible the guy just didn’t like me. I’m not everyone’s cup of tea, and I’m the first to acknowledge that. That’s ok; I didn’t much care for him either.

I’m a storyteller. I’m a writer. I’m a podcaster. Seven years ago, I learned how to tell stories in photographs and videos. I need to be thankful for learning how to do that, and the best way to show my gratitude to the people that taught me, is to do it.

Because I’m a storyteller, and a damn good one.

I’m not a sitting member of the Gen X Council, but I have a membership in the club. There’s going to be some overlap on occasion. Today is one of those days, because I can’t even begin to tell you the utter joy the return of this product gives me.

That’s it. That’s the post.

Sometimes the universe hands you something marvelous that you didn’t expect and says, “Here. This is for you.”

It could be a jelly donut, it could be a new person in your circle, it could be a new activity to enjoy, or it could be the thing that might define the next period of your life.

Whatever you do, don’t scoff and throw it back.

No one wants a second-hand jelly donut.

I don’t know who needs to hear this (me) but It is unnecessary to accomplish something every day.

Some days it really is okay to sit back and binge Major Crimes. Or so I’ve heard.

The trouble comes when you do that daily instead of getting something done.

There is a happy medium where you’re not tired from constantly being on.

You (me) should try that.

When everyone is screaming bloody murder about everything, nothing is important.

To borrow a lyric from Peter Gabriel, “Turn up the signal, wipe out the noise.”