ROLEY

  • Monday, September 25th, 2023

    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.

  • How I Manage To Make It Through Christmas Alive (Or, Roley’s Christmas Club)

    I don’t think I’m telling you any tall tales when I say that a lot of us have trouble putting a little something away.   I remember seeing a story on more than one occasion that a good chunk of us in here in America would be in some real trouble if we got sick, or if we had a car break down with something major, or a major appliance breaks down and need replacing.   I’ve certainly been in this place, I feel like a lot of us have.   On a related note, no matter how much our young folks save, it seems like simple housing—even a studio apartment—appears to be out of reach of the younger generations.   I have three kids, my youngest is gonna be 24 in October.  They all still live here at home, because they can’t afford to live anywhere else.  It’s at the point where I feel like the best course of action is to pay off this house and give it to them with the understanding that you keep a room handy for Kim and I, and we go traveling in our later years.  That’s the goal.  

    For those of us who have children, we are now entering nervous season.  For me, Fall has meant the anxiety of thinking about Christmas.  Putting stuff under the tree.  Now, I have long since passed the age where Christmas has thrown up all over my Living Room.   I still get gifts for everyone, but nowhere near the tonnage I used to.  The anxiety of putting that money away has lessened a great deal, but I still get pangs as we get closer to Christmas.   But I have found a solution that works for me and mine, and I want to share it with you.    I call it my Christmas Club account.   If you don’t know what that is, I’ll explain.   I don’t know if this is a thing anymore, but you used to be able to go to your bank and set up an automatic deposit into a savings account to have that money there when it’s time to go Holiday Shopping.    

    But let’s say you manage to put some money away for Christmas.  I have a wad of money that needs something to do, but I generally have no idea what the kids are into at this moment in time.  If you’ve bought toy horses for the daughter because she told you she liked horses in May, but has moved on to Anime in September and never mentioned it, you might know what I’m talking about.   So, I’ve devised a solution that makes everyone happy, and I get to take care of Christmas with as little anxiety as possible.  The only thing I have to deal with is the usual Holiday Gloom that I get every year, but that’s another story for another time. 

    The main ingredient you need for this recipe is Amazon.  If you object to Amazon for whatever reason, that’s fine.  I understand, and there’s no hate from me.  Vaya con Dios, compadres.   It’s simple.  First, everyone in the house has a wish list that they’ve shared with me.   Over the year, they can put whatever they want on it.  Second, you have a gift card account with your Amazon account, and it’s reloadable.  I use it as a savings account.  Every paycheck I put a minimum of 25 dollars on that gift balance.  Just using the minimum if you’re paid twice a month, you have 500 bucks in that account by the end of October.  Of course, you need to make sure that you don’t use that gift card if you buy something on Amazon in the interim, so make sure you check how you’re paying for something before you place that order.    

    You must do this first.  Don’t think about it, just do it.   If you sit there and think about it, you’ll find another reason for that 25 bucks.   If you do it and don’t think about it, you may find that you don’t miss that 25 bucks, and it’s residing in a place where it can do some good in the long term.   Of course, you may find that you can contribute more, but I would say this.  If you can find you can contribute more, then your brain has made the jump into knowing you can put money away.   Take that extra money that you’re thinking about putting in the Amazon account and put it in a savings account for when you’ve got to replace that refrigerator.   Like you do.  I hope this helps, and if you have other ways to handle this, I’d love to hear about them.  

  • Shutter Saturday: Hatteras Surfers

    Right across the parking lot from the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum is a BEAUTIFUL beach, that has had less than ten people on it every Saturday Morning I’ve been there.

    One surfer totally made me as I was taking photos. I wanted to call him Ken, but he had a surfboard, his job is more than beach.

    However, I thought you might like to see these since this is one part of my trip to OBX that didn’t flame out.

  • Friday, September 22nd, 2023

    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?

  • Thursday, September 21st, 2023

    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.

  • Wednesday, September 20th, 2023

    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.

  • Tuesday, September 19th, 2023

    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.

  • Monday, September 18th, 2023

    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.

  • My Brain Is An Endless Row Of Checkmarks

    For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been possessed with a single thought:  Exactly how much stuff should reside on my to-do list?  If I had a to-do list, that is.   Until a couple of weeks ago, I did not have a to-do list put to paper.  What I had is the same as many of us middle-aged married men have, the HoneyDo List.  It’s an ethereal mass of effort with not so much a starting point as it is the face of a mountain laden with tasks, with the words “YES DEAR” emblazoned on its face in flaming letters.   It’s an intimidating image, and as such it left me stymied as to how to attack it.   

    So I recently decided that there was only one thing for it.  I had to sit down and write it all down.  I sat down at my Mac, opened the Notes App, set a timer for 30 minutes, and wrote down all the things I thought I needed to OH MY GOD THAT MUCH!?!

    I don’t mind telling you that having an ethereal mass of effort is way less terrifying than having an exhaustively detailed list of all the shit you have to do.    Thirty-plus items I came up with in that 30 minutes.  Since then I’ve added another 10 or so when I see something I hadn’t thought of, and in that time I’ve gone from abject paralysis to abject terror.  Not just because of the size of it, but now realizing that I  have no idea which one to do first.  

    After thinking about it for a while, I thought it would be best to try to group these things into sections that make sense, and that made things a little easier.  I was able to start things.  The good news is that I’ve managed to clear half the list.   I have now reached the firstiest of the first-world problems all related to this tangent:  Now I’ve cleared all the stuff that requires nothing but time,  I have now reached the things that will require learning time or a budget, and if the past is prologue, that’s my next step.  Trying to figure out what the priority is, and now I just need to see if the priority is the investment in time, or the investment in money to hire a pro for the stuff that’s outside my ken. 

    So that’s one exercise in Executive dysfunction resolved.  Now, we just need to dedicate time to sitting down and keeping that list refreshed.   That reminds me of a technique from one of the mountains of books I’ve read called The Weekly Review.   A way of keeping track of what I have done and keeping track of what I need to do in the next week or month or so.    I realize that this might seem like a no-brainer to a lot of you, but it really isn’t one to me.  The older I get, the more I realize that I need to have alarms and buzzers and notes and things that do everything but explode in front of my face.  

    And today, I realize that this whole tangent is a lesson that I haven’t done.  Or that I have and I let it all go to pot at some point.   

    So I need to set that shit up again, Don’t I?

  • Friday, September 15th, 2023

    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.