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

Triberr

The First Day of School

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Tomorrow marks the first day of of the 2011-2012 school year for my children. It feels strange to write 2012 knowing that so much of 2011 is still left yet the new school year means that the sands of time are running…faster. Ok, they really aren’t running faster than normal but with the resurgence of school days, homework, soccer practice, gymnastics and all the other stuff it will move quickly.

In a few short hours the kids will be ensconced in classrooms with new teachers and I’ll be working out of this temporary office in our temporary home hoping that my things are temporarily lost. It is only a week since we left the old place and the usual contradiction of time has taken effect. It feels to me like we left the old house years ago and at the same time it feels like we haven’t left. If I didn’t know better I’d say that we are on vacation and that any day now we’ll go back and I’ll find all the things I am missing in the places that I kept them for the last ten years.

Ten years of life in that house gone in the blink of an eye. I never expected to be there as long as we were. It was supposed to be a starter home. When we bought it I was making a very nice living and qualified for a much larger mortgage but I wanted to be safe so I opted not to buy that other place, the one that I really loved. It was bigger, brighter and offered so very much. It seemed like a house that I could move into and live in forever, but I was conservative so I didn’t want to take that sort of risk on.

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Every year since my son started school I have wondered if they would talk about the events of  9-11 in class. Every year I have asked about it because I was curious to find out when my son would learn about what happened that day. Up to now they really haven’t had any serious classroom discussion about it. He has been too young and we are so far away it is easier to dismiss. It is different for my nieces and nephews back east. They know families who lost loved ones, not one or two but many. They know of the day and that moment in a different way.

But it had a big impact upon me for a host of reasons most of which I have blogged about before. It hit me because I was supposed to be in the city. It hit me because my oldest friend had been working at Cantor Fitzgerald (he came home just a few days before) and almost everyone he worked with in that office died. It hit me because I remember watching my son build towers with blocks and while I watched people jump he knocked the block towers down and rebuilt them. It hit me because you can’t watch that kind of thing without being impacted by it.

I’ll never forget being in the city a few months later and seeing all of the flyers and posters of missing people. Some of them had become yellowed and tattered but I looked at them hard and wondered if they were pictures of the dead or the living.

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Sometimes I look up at the moon and wonder about life. I stare at that big white orb and wonder if the magical and mystical force of my youth, that we saw on Star Wars exists. I think about Yoda and Obi-wan talking to Luke about it and how we are all tied together. I think about it and wonder about the future, destiny and our control over these things. I think about it and wonder how to harness it. Sometimes I wonder if some things are meant to be and if other things are going to be no matter what we do.

There are things and there are people that are broken. Some of them are obvious and others are less obvious. Given the choice, the power and the wisdom I would heal them. But these are things that you don’t learn in school. These are lessons that are taught by life and by experience. There aren’t any books that we can read or rely upon. Some times all we can do is use our judgment and our gut to try to make the wise choice and then we hope for the best.

Choices. So much of life relies upon the choices we make. Decisions are made with good intentions but good intentions don’t always lead to good outcomes.

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Ten years ago I didn’t have a clue what life would look like now. I remember trying to figure it out. I remember staring off into the mists of time with clear eyes and a full heart hoping that would mean that I couldn’t lose. But Coach Taylor never told me how quickly things could turn so when life happened it was a bit of a shock. These days life doesn’t shock or surprise me as much as it used to. That is not because I am so wise or so jaded that it can’t happen. Just haven’t caught lightning in a jar lately, but something tells me that this is about to change.

Something tells me that we are on the verge of major upheaval. So I am gearing up to ride the tornado and to tame the storm. I am kind of excited by it all.  A new school year and new beginnings. I wonder what we shall learn.

Blog Comments Are Not Currency

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My friend Marcus Sheridan wrote a good post about whether Livefyre is destroying the value of a blog comments.

You see, I don’t even know if ‘commenting’ platform is a proper description for Livefyre. It’smore of a conversation/awareness tool that happens to be used by many bloggers in their comment section. And when one looks at all it does, with its many notifications, real time ‘new comment’ alerts, ‘likes’, etc—it’s no wonder so many bloggers have embraced this new platform.

But that’s the thing about Livefyre- It’s too good with garnering comments.

You really should read the post and come back but I’ll try to sum it up for those who don’t.  Marcus goes on to discuss whether tools like LifeFyre and Triberr have artificially inflated tweets and comments to the point where they have been devalued. He also says that he expects that one day he will move from the native WP commenting platform but that for now he won’t because he thinks that people might be intimidated by it.

Marcus is a sharp guy and quite successful but I think that he is missing the boat on this one. The majority of most blog readers never or very rarely comment on posts. They don’t for a multitude of reasons that often have little to do with the system and more to do with other things. Some people are intimidated by posts that have large numbers of comments or appear to be populated by cliques. Some people don’t comment because they feel that they have nothing to add to the conversation or just because they don’t.

People like to think that they act based upon logic and reason but most of the time we do things for arbitrary reasons that are based on feeling. But that is a topic for a different day.

Blog Comments Are Not Currency

I do things here differently than some other bloggers. I believe in building my community around me. I want you to play an active role here. You are welcome to comment here, on my Facebook page and to follow me on Twitter. I respond to people who contact me through the blog and or email because that is the right thing to do and I appreciate your time.

But it is important to me to mention that I don’t measure the success or failure of a post based upon the number of comments it received. I see that as being soft and lacking substance. Some posts are 100 comments of people cracking jokes and or screwing around. That doesn’t bother me. Most of the time you’ll find me stirring the pot and mixing things up.

That is all fine and good but it doesn’t always advance the conversation. It doesn’t necessarily make that post more valuable than others. Sometimes a third or more of the banter comes from a very small group of commenters. The question I ask myself is does any of this really matter.

That answer varies and is contingent upon your goals.

For me I like the idea of building a community and I think that Livefyre does a good job of facilitating it. I liked what Danny Brown had to say in the comments.

I don’t see Livefyre as a “one-sentence commentary” option; far from it. Yes, it’s great for that type of comment, but it also fosters amazing discussion too. I’ve seen amazing, in-depth conversations take place via Livefyre, while the bloger can “take a backseat”, because it encourages more than just the initial readers to take part.

I’m biased, obviously, but I love the way my readers use Livefyre, and I’ve seen the same cool interaction elsewhere on other Livefyre-enabled blogs.

If the blogger hasn’t put in the effort to be welcoming and encouraging from the start (and helped with questions about changes to their blog), that’s their “fault” if they’re not enjoying the conversations they want.

My job is to make people feel comfortable here. My job is to provide content that makes people want to read and comment. My job is to make the comment section inviting.  The way that I do it is just like I said above- I build my community around me. I write about the things that fire me up. I share my thoughts and my life and along the way others who appreciate it and or feel similarly have shown up.

It is a slower path. It doesn’t build the comment section as fast as some other ways could but I suspect that it makes for more loyal readers and does a better job of developing relationships. I write for me first and then for you because that is what works for me and makes all this fun and interesting.

Stream of Consciousness

This post is all stream of consciousness. It is a 15 minute exercise in which I have tried to share some thoughts and ideas about this. They may not be as well formed as they should be or as I would like but I am ok with that.  Because with a little help from my community we’ll jump on this in the comment section and hash some of it out. I may even decide that I need to modify my stance, who knows.

What do you think about all this? Should bloggers view comments as currency? What do you hope to do at your own blog?

Bald Is Beautiful & Other Things You Need To Know

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I love that song for a million reasons but primarily because it reminds me of when my kids were really little and they rode daddy around the house. Speaking of little my mother is having a hard time with my hair or should I say that she doesn’t like that there is less of it than there once was.

I told her that bald men are beautiful and she told me that I am not bald. She is right, the hairline starts a little further back than it once did but I have  a long way before I have to worry about being bald. However, I have played around with shaving it all off long before it reaches that point. Mom doesn’t like this but I think that has more to do with her friends turning 70 and the knowledge that her own 70th birthday isn’t a dream anymore.

Mom tells me how she loved the long dark curls I had and refers to that picture of me from when I was three years-old. I laugh and tell her that I am going to write about how she is trying to turn me into a mama’s boy and she scowls. She wants to know why I must always be a pain in the ass and I say that it is because I can.

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It is a week since the move and we aren’t even close to being settled yet. Most of our stuff is in storage and the rest feels like it is scattered between two sets of houses and cars. Every day I spend time trying unpack and purge more stuff- organization will come…right? Actually I know the answer and am completely confident that it will indeed happen but it is going to take some time. Time feels like a frenemy to me. Sometimes when I want it to work with me it does but that precocious prevaricator has moments of mirth and he laughs hard at my expense.

I am not a fan of President Obama but I wouldn’t say that I am a detractor. I am sort of ambivalent but as I said earlier this week at Jayme’s place he should have kicked John Boehner’s ass six ways to Sunday. I don’t care if you don’t like the president, respect the damn office. When your president asks to speak to congress you say ok and STFU. But he didn’t and then Obama really disappointed me by not doing as I said. There are times to be quiet and there are times to be a leader and lay down the law. I am so tired of listening to both sides point fingers at each other.

Stop whining about it. Stop acting like children. In the real world if you said that you couldn’t work with someone you would be told once that it was too bad and then you would be fired. Part of the problem is that our government doesn’t feel the pain of the average person. My second largest monthly expense is healthcare. Thankfully we are healthy, but it wouldn’t take much to make life exceptionally difficult. One serious injury/illness/accident and the whole house of cards could tumble. So let me add a second STFU to the government and my size 12 boot in your ass.

Fix this. Just fix this. I am tired of paying taxes and doing the right thing to watch you act like a bunch of entitled, arrogant, clueless assholes.

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My children are playing soccer again this year. My son moved up to the U12 division and discovered to his chagrin that he is the second shortest child on the team. He is of average height for his age but puberty has begun to kick in for some of these boys and they are pretty big. After the second practice we have a long talk about this and he expressed his concerns.

I told him that my job as his father is to help him reach his potential and that I see things in him that he might not see. I said that he is much tougher, stronger and smarter than he realizes and that soccer would help him see that. He nodded his head and I wrapped him up in a giant bear hug. I wasn’t lying nor did I exaggerate. I believe all those things and think that his biggest problem is that he is tired. The move was a big deal and he didn’t want to do it. He has already asked me how much money he needs to save to buy our old house back.

With a bit of luck this soccer season will help him realize that everything I said is true. It is hard to watch his discomfort, but I can’t do this stuff for him. All I can do is try and set things up so that he can learn and grow from it. Time will tell.

Write What You Know

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Somewhere out there in the cosmos is a person who understands the magic number of 83168 equals 44 and damn doesn’t that just sound old. Just saying it out loud makes me feel like a mere babe in the woods. This post you are reading and the words that comprise it are part of what some people call free association.

I have no plan, outline nor map to use here. This is not a coup-deblog or anything all that special. It is merely the words of the man who is silly enough to call himself TheJackB even though that is not my real name. Stop gasping, all that air sucking is unbecoming and will give you a bad case of the hiccups or worse. Hell, you could end up in cleveland singing Weekend in New England or Somewhere Down the Road.

Not me, no sir, no ma’am. Me I am going be standing right here preaching the good word to write what you know and what you feel. Know and feel are key elements in writing, parenting and life. I use write and know to feed my fire and add fuel to the tanks. They are part of the practical tool kit that I carry with me…always.

For example, when I work on Fragments of Fiction I rely upon several simple elements.

  • 1) Every story has a piece of my life in it. That personal experience provides the know in the story.
  • 2) I try to inject some action and or emotion that my readers can relate to.
  • 3) Accessorize- that is a little girly sounding for me so maybe I should say that I try to add some spice to whatever I am working on. It is the marinade if you will.

Examples:

Every one of those posts contains those basic elements and every one of them has won more awards than your blog has. Ok, I haven’t a clue where that last comment came from and will plead exhaustion. Really, I am exceptionally tired and in need of a vacation.

Ok, quick intermission to share the last five songs on my iTunes:

When Angels Sing– Social Distortion
Cosmic Love– Florence  & The Machine
Hot For Teacher- Van Halen

Sorry, I changed my mind and decided to share just three songs. Just didn’t feel like going further with it. But in the very near future I think that it will be time to revisit cars. Been a while since we talked about them here. Been a while since I shared some of the cars that have served as my chariot and it is about time to rectify that. Can’t live in LA without having some good car stories and I have more than a few.

Concluding Thoughts

I need to clarify something from my open letter to Triberr members post. I am always concerned about quality. I always pay attention to the posts that I produce and am well aware that some of them don’t meet the mark that I wish to set. But unless they are truly horrific I publish them.

I refuse to let myself be paralyzed by fear of failure. I won’t not publish because I think that a post is subpar. I am the publisher here. I make the rules and I set the tone. This place is my home, my cyber refuge and the place I use to practice my art. Writing is an art and there is no way to improve without practice.

Sometimes your feedback helps me in ways that I cannot predict. Sometimes you catch things that I don’t and point out details that I miss and I find that to be quite helpful. Sometimes you love the stuff I hate. Good content is of paramount importance but when I write about what I know I usually come close enough to the mark to not be embarrassed.

An Open Letter To Triberr Members

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there's no need to worry this is just a vacation
there’s no need to worry this is just a vacation (Photo credit: Robert Bruce Murray III // Sort Of Natural)

If you are looking for a post that explains what Triberr is and what benefits it offers this isn’t going to be that post. I am not going to provide you with a 500 word essay extolling the virtues of using Triberr nor am I going to provide you with a list of crap that they don’t do well. There are lots of those posts out there already and I don’t feel like adding to the echo chamber.

Instead I am going to engage in my curmudgeonly ways and rant about some things that irritate me about Triberr members. But before I do let me provide my credentials. I am Jack and I belong to two super tribes and a handful of normal sized tribes. The two supertribes have more than 50 members between them. Add the normal sized tribes to the two others and in theory I have a reach that is larger than many newspapers.

Yep, posts like this are broadcast to hundreds of thousands of people or so the theory works. It is always possible that my fellow tribesmen will decide that this or any other post I write are not appropriate for their tribes and will choose not to tweet them. Because I like to push the envelope I sometimes think about writing headlines like “My first Blowjob” or “Hung Like A Horse” for no other reason than to see how many people let them fly.

But I haven’t written those for a variety of reasons not the least of which has been my foray into hell known as moving. Being a man’s man I can only focus on two things at once and as a result that experiment got bumped.

Anyhoo, the reason I am writing this is because frankly I want to share my irritation with the bloggers who expend copious amounts of energy worrying about ratings, karma score and all things related to this.  My friends and I say that loosely why are you worried about whether your fellow tribesmen are giving you a thumbs up or down.

Most of you will never get famous, earn real money or get a job from blogging. I attribute that to the Fouker Study of August 30, 2011 which discovered that most bloggers quit after 90 days because they find it is work. That same study also demonstrated that very few bloggers have passion, persistence and perseverance tied to their names.

They get caught up worrying about trivial things and ignore the big picture. They don’t spend time building communities. They don’t spend time developing friendships and rarely ask for help. But they do a damn fine job of of whining about crap that doesn’t matter.

Writers write. They do it because they love it and because they can’t imagine a world or a time in which they can’t manipulate words to tell the stories that reside in their heads. They spend minimal time worrying about readers because their head feels like it is about to explode-not because it is filled with air but because it is filled with stories.

They write every damn day and go a little crazy because every time they read their words they see a way that they could have said it better.

That doesn’t mean that writers never worry about readers or that they don’t want comments. Of course they do. It would be great if I were published more places and every post had a hundred comments, but they don’t and I am cool with that because I have to write. I have to do my daily dance with the keyboard. I have to set the letters free and watch the words roll down the page.

I don’t fear writing bad posts because I have written plenty and will write more. What I fear is different. What I fear is letting fear of failure fan the flames of doubt and insecurity. What I fear is giving up one day before I am discovered or one word before creating the perfect post. What I fear is not leaving it all out here,

Anyway, that is my deal. You can worry about the thumbs-down crap. I don’t give a damn about that because frankly half the time they aren’t reading your post- that rating is strictly off of the headline. Did I mention that I think that headlines are overrated. I’ll save that for later, it is after 1  I finished cramming for finals years ago.

A Moving Story

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I have used One Slip lyrics to fuel my fiction on a number of occasions but there are large pieces that could easily fit into this post of reality. Except I don’t have the time nor energy to weave the words into my detail. But I’ll do my best to give this a double dose of my normal alacrity and we’ll see what happens.

“A small regret, you won’t forget,
There’ll be no sleep in here tonight”

The move has been harder, tougher and longer than expected in every way. I am built like a bull and not Baryshnikov. You won’t look at me to dance gracefully across the stage but you’d hire me to move your couch or engage in general demolition. I have hands that some refer to as paws, arms like a gorilla a broad back that has been used to move more than a few pieces of furniture.

This is not the first time I have moved furniture for myself or for other others. I know what it means to work with my hands and have never been the stranger to hard, physical labor. Grunt work in basketball and football has always been where I made my mark. I pound, push, pull, tug and shrug my way from place to place. So I approached this move like I had with every other.

But time is a fickle woman who sometimes can be a friend and sometimes a foe. She tossed her head the other way and I found myself fighting aches, pains and bruises that had never been. Add in a heat wave that sent the temperature soaring above triple digits, more stuff to move than anticipated, unexpected emotion and you to can chug down this witch’s brew.

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Somewhere around midday I found myself thinking about my paternal grandfather and what sort of stories he might have shared with me regarding the move and the accompanying nonsense. But instead of focusing on what he might have said I remembered a different story that took place when he was in high school.

Grandpa got in trouble in school and was told that he couldn’t return to class unless his father and he met with the principal. Grandpa was less than thrilled with the idea of telling his father about this and decided that there had to be a way around the punishment that would have assuredly been doled out by my great grandfather.

So he hired a man to come to school with him to pretend to be his father. The time and day arrive and together the two of them walk into the principal’s office. The principal begins a lengthy recitation of what my grandfather has done wrong. Midways through his recitation the man who is prentending to be my great grandfather reaches over and belts my grandfather, knocking him off of the chair he is sitting on.

A few minutes later my grandfather is furiously berating the man who hit hm and asks why he did it as the whole purpose in hiring him was to avoid getting punished. And in response he was told, ‘you wanted it to look real, didn’t you.”

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The majority of the move is now done. There are relatively few items left to pack and or process. The majority have been moved into storage pods, given away or left in garbage cans. Soon we’ll have completely crested the hill and it will be time to decompress and let go of the energy that I have been carrying around. New chapters remain to be written and new opportunities to be discovered.

Much has been learned and more remains. This post is really just part of short diversion designed to help me catch my breath. It is time to pop two Advil and finish what has been started. This story remains unfinished.