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

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Tooling Through Time & Space

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Sometimes I stumble across old posts like This Was Our Song and it takes me on a trip tooling through time and space. Reminds me of where I once was and where I stand now.

That was a pretty good post, I am proud of it.

It is almost 13 years to the day since I wrote it.

That is hard to believe, but I know it to be true. So much has changed and so much has evolved since then. I remember the man I once was and the man I am now.

There are big differences yet crossover between the two. Reminds me of how every time I think I have figured some things out life shows me that maybe I haven’t.

And yet in so many areas there is no question that I have.

I wonder sometimes if maybe I am crazy and confused. I wonder sometimes if wishes and wants have got me so damn mixed up that I can’t tell what is from what was. And then Mick sings that line using your heart and not your head and I wonder if he is talking to us.

That is one of my favorite sections, but not the favorite.

Might have to read and reread to determine what it is. Always interesting to me to read old material and see who I once was and to think about who I am.

But I said that above and maybe twice is enough or maybe not.

Near death experiences sometimes change you.

Chanukah 2025

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These are dark days that are filled with millions of lights being lit all around the world. The Jew haters are actively moving to try and place their thumbs upon us, but they fail to recognize the days of the shtetl Jew are over.

We are small in minority, but mighty in spirit and resilience.

We may bend, but we do not break.

The shooters at Bondi Beach were met by people of spirit and not just members of the tribe but others too. There is more good than bad, the light shines.

The Blog Isn’t Dead

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This blog isn’t dead, though it might feel like it. The blog isn’t dead even if the head writer almost died.

No, it is still going, still in a transformative state or so it seems.

This blog lives.

What Do You Spend Your Energy on?

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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.

12 Years Ago

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Twelve years ago I sat on a balcony 50 or so miles away from here imagining what the future would look like.

I had attended a celebration at The Keg in Fort Worth followed by an after party that gave me an idea for what things could look like down the road.

Twelve years later some of what I imagined has come to pass and some of it seems improbable if not impossible. Can’t tell you if that is the best or worst outcome because you can’t see the future with the sort of clarity one might want or at least I cannot.

People who swore they would be part of my life forever have chosen to walk upon other paths and I have let them go. Spent lots of time trying to chase and or carry them but they didn’t want that. They gave up on the good, the beautiful and I am sure did so because they convinced themselves there was ugly.

Can’t say ugly wasn’t there and that challenges didn’t exist because you find those things in life. Some people choose to walk with you through the fire and to take on the good and the bad.

Sometimes they choose to turn their backs on those who were always there for them. That is a them issue and not a me issue.

I can’t make anyone do anything. It was disturbing, disappointing and hurtful, but that is how it goes sometimes. It is there choice and their loss.

Truth

Been involved in what feels like an endless stream of conversations about what truth is and isn’t. It is exhausting to be constantly engaged in such things but it seems to be par for the course now. If it is not MAGA repeating 47’s endless lies it is Blue MAGA lying about Israel, Zionism and Judaism.

I keep telling myself this too shall pass but it feels like it is taking extra long time for such a thing to happen.

It is problematic to see so many adopt this position of truth being malleable based upon their tribal definition of what the facts are.

It is a dangerous way to go about life because some facts aren’t open to interpretation or adjustment. That particular statement irks me more than I can tell you because it is a pandora’s box of nonsense but there is a philosophical case that could be applied.

But I am not going to take that on here, not now and maybe not ever.

Probably something SQ and I might have discussed but she is on her walkabout and may not find me because I am no longer standing in the places and spaces I once occupied.

Makes me sad to say it but again that is life and sometimes you have to do your own thing for a bit or a lifetime. One never knows.

Going to wrap this up with a link to The New Normal so I can use it as a reference point for something different later on.

Will probably post this on Facebook just to see if it gets any traction. I doubt it, but sometimes I like to test things out.

I Am Still Here

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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.