My former law school classmate and current writing nemesis Clay Travis recently bragged that his blog got 700,000 hits this month, up from 500,000 the month before.
Mine isn't quite there yet.
But it keeps getting closer. The blog reached new heights yet again this month. For the first time ever, we got more than 500 page views (and the total will probably end up at closer to 600 by midnight tomorrow), after hitting about 400 in August, which itself was cause for celebration in these parts.
The blog doesn't work without your help. This month, I got more of it than ever before.
Thank you.
I still don't know much about how this world works. I can't explain why life often seems harder than it should, or why automated customer service systems only offer five buttons to press, none of which include the thing about which you are calling.
But I do know this. Life is better when you spend it doing something worthwhile.
I hope you continue to so consider this space. I'll keep writing as long as you do.
God bless, and happy October. Let's break another record this month.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
A Secret Confession of Your Annoying Co-Worker
I am that co-worker everyone hates.
I am socially awkward without realizing it. I will stand in your office and blather on in an unceasing monologue on a topic of minimal interest, even to me.
You might try to turn your attention away from me.
You might pretend to start working while I’m in your office in the hopes I will get the hint and leave. I can assure you that your efforts will fail. I will continue making myself comfortable in your personal space and continue my one-person conversation undeterred. I will stay until one of our co-workers eventually takes note of this painful conversation, takes mercy on you and calls your phone, offering some pretextual reason for you to abort our conversation.
At least until I come back this afternoon.
At some level, I realize you don’t like me. I know you’d rather be doing something else with someone—anyone—other than me. But while I realize all of these things, if I stopped and listened to this inner voice, I’d have no one left to talk to at all. Besides, if I keep talking, uninterrupted, perhaps I’ll eventually win you over with my effervescent wit.
I know that, in general, every office has at least one person that everyone else makes fun of at the water cooler. Oddly, my office doesn’t seem to have one of those. And if it does, it’s that guy down the hall who talks a little too loudly. I will make fun of him regularly, just to convince everyone that it is he who is the odd duck in these parts.
I’m either incredibly lonely, have poor social skills or am an intractable bore. Possibly all of the above. I would ask you which of these possibilities apply, but you stopped paying attention to anything I had to say about 10 minutes ago.
I spend so much time boring you to tears with my inane ramblings during the workday, that I get very little actual work done. That’s ok. I will attempt to cover up this fact by speaking in painfully overexaggerated detail about every small piece of effort I put forth.
I will also magnify the importance of all my trivial accomplishments, so that you think I am by a large margin the most important contributor to the office, when in fact, everyone else on my floor would see their productivity increase threefold by the sheer absence of my distracting presence.
In an effort to make you believe I am more important than you, I will belittle all of your achievements and magnify all of your failures. If I am for some reason unable to do so to you directly, I will gladly cut out the middle man and address my critiques directly to your supervisor, who also would benefit to hear of both your inadequacies and my delusions of office grandeur.
I regularly take three hour lunches, but make snide and very public remarks about your leaving at 4:52 on a Friday afternoon, even if your workday ended at 4:30.
Even if I left at 2:00.
I magnify any meager development that bears passing resemblance to my own accomplishment, but dismiss your genuine triumphs as routine.
I take joy in prattling on endlessly about subjects that I know you care not about, because I love the sound of my own voice.
I knock on your door, and when you don’t answer, I open it anyway.
If, for some reason, you considered this possible scenario and put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on your door, I will email you to ask if you are aware of this bizarre request to forgo the pleasure of my company.
I am that person in your office. You cannot escape me, try as you might. I will tell you about the intricate details of my fantasy football team, the virtual universe I painstakingly created, that tv show you don’t watch, or some obscure sporting event about which you care not.
I don’t know why I do this. I know you think I’m annoying. Everyone in the office thinks I’m annoying. Truth be told, I even think I’m annoying.
I just can’t help myself. And at least when I’m annoying you, I’m still the center of your attention.
Which is all that really matters.
I am socially awkward without realizing it. I will stand in your office and blather on in an unceasing monologue on a topic of minimal interest, even to me.
You might try to turn your attention away from me.
You might pretend to start working while I’m in your office in the hopes I will get the hint and leave. I can assure you that your efforts will fail. I will continue making myself comfortable in your personal space and continue my one-person conversation undeterred. I will stay until one of our co-workers eventually takes note of this painful conversation, takes mercy on you and calls your phone, offering some pretextual reason for you to abort our conversation.
At least until I come back this afternoon.
At some level, I realize you don’t like me. I know you’d rather be doing something else with someone—anyone—other than me. But while I realize all of these things, if I stopped and listened to this inner voice, I’d have no one left to talk to at all. Besides, if I keep talking, uninterrupted, perhaps I’ll eventually win you over with my effervescent wit.
I know that, in general, every office has at least one person that everyone else makes fun of at the water cooler. Oddly, my office doesn’t seem to have one of those. And if it does, it’s that guy down the hall who talks a little too loudly. I will make fun of him regularly, just to convince everyone that it is he who is the odd duck in these parts.
I’m either incredibly lonely, have poor social skills or am an intractable bore. Possibly all of the above. I would ask you which of these possibilities apply, but you stopped paying attention to anything I had to say about 10 minutes ago.
I spend so much time boring you to tears with my inane ramblings during the workday, that I get very little actual work done. That’s ok. I will attempt to cover up this fact by speaking in painfully overexaggerated detail about every small piece of effort I put forth.
I will also magnify the importance of all my trivial accomplishments, so that you think I am by a large margin the most important contributor to the office, when in fact, everyone else on my floor would see their productivity increase threefold by the sheer absence of my distracting presence.
In an effort to make you believe I am more important than you, I will belittle all of your achievements and magnify all of your failures. If I am for some reason unable to do so to you directly, I will gladly cut out the middle man and address my critiques directly to your supervisor, who also would benefit to hear of both your inadequacies and my delusions of office grandeur.
I regularly take three hour lunches, but make snide and very public remarks about your leaving at 4:52 on a Friday afternoon, even if your workday ended at 4:30.
Even if I left at 2:00.
I magnify any meager development that bears passing resemblance to my own accomplishment, but dismiss your genuine triumphs as routine.
I take joy in prattling on endlessly about subjects that I know you care not about, because I love the sound of my own voice.
I knock on your door, and when you don’t answer, I open it anyway.
If, for some reason, you considered this possible scenario and put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on your door, I will email you to ask if you are aware of this bizarre request to forgo the pleasure of my company.
I am that person in your office. You cannot escape me, try as you might. I will tell you about the intricate details of my fantasy football team, the virtual universe I painstakingly created, that tv show you don’t watch, or some obscure sporting event about which you care not.
I don’t know why I do this. I know you think I’m annoying. Everyone in the office thinks I’m annoying. Truth be told, I even think I’m annoying.
I just can’t help myself. And at least when I’m annoying you, I’m still the center of your attention.
Which is all that really matters.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
No, We Don't Have Kids
Yes, I am married.
No, we don't have children.
Stop asking.
I can't count the number of times that inquisitive strangers have expressed dissatisfaction with this situation. Hearing that I don't have children seems to disappoint almost everyone who bothers to ask.
Why do relative strangers care whether or not I have children?
Why does the random co-worker with whom I find myself making small talk at an office function frown upon learning I am childless?
Does she think the world perilously unpopulated? Does she think I'm so remarkably brilliant and strikingly attractive that failing to pass on my genetic code would work to the detriment of humankind?
Why does the middle aged guy in the elevator abruptly end our conversation upon hearing that I have a two-person family? Are his conversational skills so limited that he can't think to ask a question on another subject? Is he so self-centered that he finds me of no conversational value if I can't pass along child rearing tips?
Perhaps it is all of these things. Perhaps it is just the part about being brilliant and good looking.
Or maybe people seem disappointed in my childless answer because they "compassionately" assume that I must have wanted kids, just like they did, only failed to produce them somehow.
Don't get me wrong.
I have nothing against people who have, or want to have, kids. It's just never struck me personally as a particularly good idea, knowing my talents and limitations. I can't even keep a plant alive (sorry, Kelsey. I tried. Harder than you know.)
I come home from work every day mentally drained and physically exhausted--it's all I can do to feed my cats. We have little to no spare money left over every month after the bills are paid as it is.
Of the six or seven various conflicting obligations in my life, I'm generally scandalously neglecting, almost to the point of criminality, at least two of them on a rotating basis at any given time. I can get away with this now. There are no criminal repercussions if I fail to get a blog written on time or get the date wrong on a volunteer project. But the same can't be said if I absent-mindedly drop Junior in the dryer along with the towels.
I just can't imagine how life would work if kids were part of the equation.
The people who fit it all in have a talent that I do not.
People who don't know me still assume that I must be sobbing myself to sleep every night, hunched in a bedroom corner, over my barren existence. I'm just not.
Sometimes people mean well. I get that. A lot of people really are so wrapped up in their children's lives that they just don't have much of a conversational bank to turn to if they can't swap childcare stories with their conversation partner.
They don't abruptly cut off conversations because they think they're better than me, but because they have nothing non-child related to say. But more often than not, those who frown and shut off conversation upon hearing of my lack of offspring give off a very different impression. Kind of like when someone asks you about your political affiliation and then loses interest when you give the "wrong" answer.
People assume my life is incomplete because I don't have something that they wanted. Sometimes they won't even take my word for it that I don't actually want to help populate the earth. If I had a nickel for every time someone said "someday you'll change your mind" about having kids, I'd have enough money to comfortably raise one.
Some people take this assumption so far that they say sometimes work condescending lines into conversations like "someday when you have kids, you'll understand why should have voted for Harry McGruber," or whatever other topic it is they are failing convince me of on its own merits.
Sometimes people try to change my mind, telling me what a blessing kids are, as though a brief encounter with a relative stranger at the office Christmas party is going alter my long-term life plan.
I just don't understand why some people seem to care so much.
Just like they don't understand why my life doesn't include kids.
No, we don't have children.
Stop asking.
I can't count the number of times that inquisitive strangers have expressed dissatisfaction with this situation. Hearing that I don't have children seems to disappoint almost everyone who bothers to ask.
Why do relative strangers care whether or not I have children?
Why does the random co-worker with whom I find myself making small talk at an office function frown upon learning I am childless?
Does she think the world perilously unpopulated? Does she think I'm so remarkably brilliant and strikingly attractive that failing to pass on my genetic code would work to the detriment of humankind?
Why does the middle aged guy in the elevator abruptly end our conversation upon hearing that I have a two-person family? Are his conversational skills so limited that he can't think to ask a question on another subject? Is he so self-centered that he finds me of no conversational value if I can't pass along child rearing tips?
Perhaps it is all of these things. Perhaps it is just the part about being brilliant and good looking.
Or maybe people seem disappointed in my childless answer because they "compassionately" assume that I must have wanted kids, just like they did, only failed to produce them somehow.
Don't get me wrong.
I have nothing against people who have, or want to have, kids. It's just never struck me personally as a particularly good idea, knowing my talents and limitations. I can't even keep a plant alive (sorry, Kelsey. I tried. Harder than you know.)
I come home from work every day mentally drained and physically exhausted--it's all I can do to feed my cats. We have little to no spare money left over every month after the bills are paid as it is.
Of the six or seven various conflicting obligations in my life, I'm generally scandalously neglecting, almost to the point of criminality, at least two of them on a rotating basis at any given time. I can get away with this now. There are no criminal repercussions if I fail to get a blog written on time or get the date wrong on a volunteer project. But the same can't be said if I absent-mindedly drop Junior in the dryer along with the towels.
I just can't imagine how life would work if kids were part of the equation.
The people who fit it all in have a talent that I do not.
People who don't know me still assume that I must be sobbing myself to sleep every night, hunched in a bedroom corner, over my barren existence. I'm just not.
Sometimes people mean well. I get that. A lot of people really are so wrapped up in their children's lives that they just don't have much of a conversational bank to turn to if they can't swap childcare stories with their conversation partner.
They don't abruptly cut off conversations because they think they're better than me, but because they have nothing non-child related to say. But more often than not, those who frown and shut off conversation upon hearing of my lack of offspring give off a very different impression. Kind of like when someone asks you about your political affiliation and then loses interest when you give the "wrong" answer.
People assume my life is incomplete because I don't have something that they wanted. Sometimes they won't even take my word for it that I don't actually want to help populate the earth. If I had a nickel for every time someone said "someday you'll change your mind" about having kids, I'd have enough money to comfortably raise one.
Some people take this assumption so far that they say sometimes work condescending lines into conversations like "someday when you have kids, you'll understand why should have voted for Harry McGruber," or whatever other topic it is they are failing convince me of on its own merits.
Sometimes people try to change my mind, telling me what a blessing kids are, as though a brief encounter with a relative stranger at the office Christmas party is going alter my long-term life plan.
I just don't understand why some people seem to care so much.
Just like they don't understand why my life doesn't include kids.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
The 400 Club
Clay Travis and I went to law school together. He got a legal job and decided he didn't like it. Truth be told, nobody really does.
So he quit.
He started writing instead. He developed a following, wrote two best selling books and last month had 500,000 visits to his website.
He doesn't return my emails now, but I'm sure he makes a nice living, doing what he loves.
Against this backdrop, it doesn't sound very impressive to say that this blog got 400 hits in August.
It doesn't sound impressive until I remember that less than a year ago that I posted twice as often and this space still didn't get 100 hits in a month. That's right, the blog is slowing taking off--August was the second best month ever--and I want to thank you all for it. Please come back. Often.
The long term goal is to sell ads in this space and make a living entertaining you. It's getting closer all the time.
That said, the blog is at a bit of a crossroads. The sports website for which I write (also for free), Bleacher Report, has a built-in audience that provides me, literally, 100 times the audience my personal blog gets. If I want to make a living writing, Bleacher Report seems the most obvious path the that goal. And every post I do here is one less post I do there.
But I can only write about sports there. I can't do a column where I answer made-up silly questions. I can't blog political debates or provide a running diary of my holidays or conversations with customer service specialists there. I need to do these things.
This is where you come in. I'll keep doing this as long as this site continues to make progress in catching up to my other one. I try to post something new by Tuesday or every week, but occasionally I can't get around to it until Wednesday. Soon, hopefully, it will be more often. But I need you here. All 400 of you. And 400 of your friends.
I know you probably don't have 400 friends, but perhaps you have two. Refer them both here, because the other people who find this blog entertaining probably don't have any friends at all.
The more people who read, the sooner I can do this full time and consistently post new stuff more than once a week.
And then we'll all be happy.
So he quit.
He started writing instead. He developed a following, wrote two best selling books and last month had 500,000 visits to his website.
He doesn't return my emails now, but I'm sure he makes a nice living, doing what he loves.
Against this backdrop, it doesn't sound very impressive to say that this blog got 400 hits in August.
It doesn't sound impressive until I remember that less than a year ago that I posted twice as often and this space still didn't get 100 hits in a month. That's right, the blog is slowing taking off--August was the second best month ever--and I want to thank you all for it. Please come back. Often.
The long term goal is to sell ads in this space and make a living entertaining you. It's getting closer all the time.
That said, the blog is at a bit of a crossroads. The sports website for which I write (also for free), Bleacher Report, has a built-in audience that provides me, literally, 100 times the audience my personal blog gets. If I want to make a living writing, Bleacher Report seems the most obvious path the that goal. And every post I do here is one less post I do there.
But I can only write about sports there. I can't do a column where I answer made-up silly questions. I can't blog political debates or provide a running diary of my holidays or conversations with customer service specialists there. I need to do these things.
This is where you come in. I'll keep doing this as long as this site continues to make progress in catching up to my other one. I try to post something new by Tuesday or every week, but occasionally I can't get around to it until Wednesday. Soon, hopefully, it will be more often. But I need you here. All 400 of you. And 400 of your friends.
I know you probably don't have 400 friends, but perhaps you have two. Refer them both here, because the other people who find this blog entertaining probably don't have any friends at all.
The more people who read, the sooner I can do this full time and consistently post new stuff more than once a week.
And then we'll all be happy.
Why Holidays Should Never Fall on a Monday
Holidays should never fall on Mondays.
The effort that goes into hosting, or sometimes even attending, a holiday function is so great that it requires an off day, maybe even a whole weekend, to recover from it all.
When a three-day weekend arises, we should celebrate the holiday on Friday and then give everyone their normal weekend. Thursday nights (which would be the start of the weekend under my plan) are more fun than Sunday nights anyway.
As Labor Day has come and gone, I'm reminded of exactly why holiday Mondays are such a bad idea by looking back to my Fourth of July (also a Monday), which went something like this:
8:00 a.m.: Wake up, start coffee maker. Clean grill to host monster cookout later in day.
9:00: Start preparation of burger patties and veggies for cookout.
9:02: Dang it. I'm out of seasoning for the meat and two of our ears of corn are bad. And we don't have any creamer for the coffee...
9:06: Find shoes for quick grocery store run.
9:10: Arrive at eerily empty grocery store. I guess everyone else checked their grilling supplies at least a day early. Interesting idea.
9:32: Come home, notice the grass looks kinda bad, even though I cut it last week. Lots of people coming over. It looks just bad enough. Dang it.
10:00: Grass is cut, time to shower.
10:12: Forgot about the burgers!!!!!! Begin frantic burger preparation of partially defrosted burgers for 23 person cookout. Enlist visiting friend's help to season vegetables, clean floors, dance and sing for quarters. Well, maybe not the last part. But most everything else. Make mental note to apologize later.
10:52: Food is ready for cooking. Friends stop off to bring drinks over, requiring ice chest preparation and refrigerator reconfiguration. Remember that I forgot to eat breakfast.
11:15 Fire up grill.
2:00 Guests having eaten already, I pull of the last three burgers on the grill. Remember to eat breakfast.
2:05: Settle in to eat, put away food and finally relax and enjoy my afternoon.
2:14: Phone rings. 8 more guests on the way. Pull food back out.
3:00: More guests arrive, time to play host again.
4:45: Attempt to herd people out so we can have dinner, shower and head out for fireworks show.
5:02: Still herding.
5:12: Herding momentum stalled. Publically announce intention to take shower in hopes of getting people to leave. No success.
5:13: Take shower in hopes guests will leave.
5:24: Partial Success.
5:28: Leave house, allowing guests to stay in our absence. Hopefully they will do our dishes while we're gone.
7:00: Arrive downtown and walk to friends' condo, arriving considerably late. Watch fireworks. Good time.
10:30: Head back to the car, fight monster insane traffic home.
11:30: Get home, look for guests who still might be there. Collapse in a heap in preparation for work the next day.
I realize that not every holiday is quite that crazy. Our Labor Day, for instance, was spent alone sitting on our porch. But most people end up doing something--traveling, hosting a party, drinking too much--on a holiday from which they could use a little recovery time.
That's why holidays should never fall on a Monday.
The effort that goes into hosting, or sometimes even attending, a holiday function is so great that it requires an off day, maybe even a whole weekend, to recover from it all.
When a three-day weekend arises, we should celebrate the holiday on Friday and then give everyone their normal weekend. Thursday nights (which would be the start of the weekend under my plan) are more fun than Sunday nights anyway.
As Labor Day has come and gone, I'm reminded of exactly why holiday Mondays are such a bad idea by looking back to my Fourth of July (also a Monday), which went something like this:
8:00 a.m.: Wake up, start coffee maker. Clean grill to host monster cookout later in day.
9:00: Start preparation of burger patties and veggies for cookout.
9:02: Dang it. I'm out of seasoning for the meat and two of our ears of corn are bad. And we don't have any creamer for the coffee...
9:06: Find shoes for quick grocery store run.
9:10: Arrive at eerily empty grocery store. I guess everyone else checked their grilling supplies at least a day early. Interesting idea.
9:32: Come home, notice the grass looks kinda bad, even though I cut it last week. Lots of people coming over. It looks just bad enough. Dang it.
10:00: Grass is cut, time to shower.
10:12: Forgot about the burgers!!!!!! Begin frantic burger preparation of partially defrosted burgers for 23 person cookout. Enlist visiting friend's help to season vegetables, clean floors, dance and sing for quarters. Well, maybe not the last part. But most everything else. Make mental note to apologize later.
10:52: Food is ready for cooking. Friends stop off to bring drinks over, requiring ice chest preparation and refrigerator reconfiguration. Remember that I forgot to eat breakfast.
11:15 Fire up grill.
2:00 Guests having eaten already, I pull of the last three burgers on the grill. Remember to eat breakfast.
2:05: Settle in to eat, put away food and finally relax and enjoy my afternoon.
2:14: Phone rings. 8 more guests on the way. Pull food back out.
3:00: More guests arrive, time to play host again.
4:45: Attempt to herd people out so we can have dinner, shower and head out for fireworks show.
5:02: Still herding.
5:12: Herding momentum stalled. Publically announce intention to take shower in hopes of getting people to leave. No success.
5:13: Take shower in hopes guests will leave.
5:24: Partial Success.
5:28: Leave house, allowing guests to stay in our absence. Hopefully they will do our dishes while we're gone.
7:00: Arrive downtown and walk to friends' condo, arriving considerably late. Watch fireworks. Good time.
10:30: Head back to the car, fight monster insane traffic home.
11:30: Get home, look for guests who still might be there. Collapse in a heap in preparation for work the next day.
I realize that not every holiday is quite that crazy. Our Labor Day, for instance, was spent alone sitting on our porch. But most people end up doing something--traveling, hosting a party, drinking too much--on a holiday from which they could use a little recovery time.
That's why holidays should never fall on a Monday.
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