Do you suffer from Weird Beard?

I have never really been able to grow my facial hair out fully. In my 20s, if I shaved on Monday, I would not get 5 o’clock shadow until about noon on Thursday.  Later in my 30s, the stubble showed up sooner, but it was still like nothing, nothing, nothing, then boom: 5 o’clock shadow that looked like I hadn’t shaved in a week.

I never minded because I’m not a beard, mustache, or goatee person. I know younger guys in leadership roles try to grow their beards to look older (think NFL Quarterbacks) and some guys see facial hair as a symbol of manhood.  I never gave any fucks about that.  The only time it really mattered was one October I wanted to grow some facial hair to augment my Halloween costume: Qui-Gon Jinn.

During this lockdown, shelter in place, self-quarantine, whatever we’re calling it, I decided to see what happens if I let it grow out. I was already putting off shaving in order to keep my blade supply alive. So I decided to see if I could look like Tony Stark.

No luck on the Iron Man alter ego.  Naturally, I consulted the wisdom of my Facebook friends and the results were an even mixture of Yes, No and Do What Makes You Happy.  Some guys look great with facial hair, completely transforming their look.  I’m not really one of those guys.

I think it has taken me two weeks to get to just this point and I’m not really loving it.  It feels funny to have hair on my face and it’s kinda scratchy.  I turn 51 next week and to commemorate, I’m gonna shave it off.

 

Stay tuned.

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What I learned from my impromptu Facebook Diet

Recently I went on a Facebook Diet. I know there are a plethora of blog posts about people giving up Social Media.   Don’t click away… I’m gonna increase the amount of insight, and decrease the amount of self-aggrandizement.  The ratio will be close to perfect.

While the timing overlapped with Lent, it was not something this heathen officially gave up for the Catholic season. I just, more or less, made a conscious effort to limit my Facebook activities about this time. It helped that my day job was so busy that checking Facebook first thing in the morning wasn’t always an option. I don’t commute to work anymore but my mornings are spent getting moose and squirrel ready and off to daycare.  Therefore I no longer engage in my commuter ritual of burying my face in my phone and ignoring all the unwashed masses on the Blue Line.

I still checked FB regularly for the distractions. Working from home, Facebook is my way of keeping up with friends Life Achievements and a poor way of interacting with people on a virtual level. Admittedly it is also the source of the majority of my news.   I still maintain that FB can be an excellent archival tool to remember what you did x years ago and who you did it with.

But I didn’t post as many status updates as I have in the past. By the scientific method of making shit up, I’d say I posted only 10% of what I normally do. I still checked into places, posted pictures of my douche nugget cute kids and tagged friends where appropriate.  Also, I didn’t make it Facebook official by ironically announcing it on any social media platform.

What did I learn? The less you engage with FB, the less it engages with you. One of the few posts I did share during this diet was that one about “if you knew me in high school, ” I got a few comments but not nearly as many as some of my other posts if This Year in Facebook is to be believed.  That is even adjusting for all the people who have hidden or taken a break from me, and vice versa.

I don’t know much about the FB algorithm, other than it is evil and more regressive than the tax code, but it does seem to be based on interaction.

Facebook is a bit like high school in more ways than one. It mirrors my High School experience in that freshmen year we were all equals. Then the cliques formed and people factioned off. By senior year I had a handful of close friends and the rest were classmates that I use to know. On FB I have some friends who have never interacted with me and vice versa. SomedayI might purge them.  Or just leave them in the FB archive, a souvenir to prove to the world we were once friends.

 

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Summer of 99: When It all went to Hell

This time of year always brings me back to the Summer of 1999 when I experienced a terrible Series of Unfortunate Events.  I lost my job.  I broke my toe.  My roommate and I were not getting along.  I got mugged.  And I let someone special get away.

Hat tip to Nina Vallone of YouKnowKeen.  She inspired me to write this based on this post.  

It always works out in the end; if it hasn’t worked out, it’s not the end

Back in the day, before the Marathon Era of my life, I ate, slept and breathed Volleyball. I wasn’t tournament level good but I was decent enough. We use to play volleyball on Tuesdays and Thursdays in Lincoln Park.  We would play until the sun went down, then head to the bar. It was usually very late nights but I still managed to get home just before midnight and get enough sleep to make it through my mindbogglingly boring job as a paralegal the next day. At the start of summer the sun would still be out while we were finishing up the last games. But about this time next week or two, it would start getting a little darker as we finished our games.
Those were fun times but I don’t think I really ever appreciated them for what they were. I should have really just appreciated the fact that I was enjoying all the city had to offer.

“My life was a mess. I was breaking down who I had become. Knowing all too well, I was existing for the moment, living my life, hurried and worried.”

And it all came to a head on the Friday of July 19, 1999.  This was the day I got fired from my dead end job as a paralegal at Big Bucks Law Firm 1.0.  That morning started out on the wrong foot.  I was running late and as I entered the lobby, I ran into a former co-worker.  We hugged and did that thing were you try unsuccessfully to catch up on two years in 30 seconds.

Seeing her was a foreshadowing of things to come.

I don’t want to relive the dirty details of all the Unfortunate Events.  The broken toe meant I couldn’t  defend myself well against the muggers; the getting fired made me too embarrassed to call her back.    I was in G-school but couldn’t get a job in technology because I had neither a degree or experienced.  The irony of that is I wasn’t any smarter the day I got my diploma than the day before but we value that piece of paper, or at least we use to.

At the time, I felt like I was at the end of my rope.  And then I had my epiphany.  And then my Year of Hell, taking on student loans and 3 course per quarter so I could graduation within a year.  And a crappy job at a DotCom.  Things didn’t get better until they did.  And there were other special someones until there was The Special Someone.  And I learned not to be afraid of the Dark.

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Reflections on my 10 year Facebook Anniversary

Facebook told me that it is our 10th anniversary. Apparently I signed up in June of 2008. That sound about right. I had come back from a trip to Europe and sent around my Prague Marathon story. Back then I did my blog posts and status updates the old fashion way: annoying emails that most people deleted without reading.

A friend wrote back, asking if I was on Facebook. I said no but would sign up as soon as I figured out what Facebook was. I figured it was something like MySpace and Friendster and whatever Microsoft was trying at the moment. I created an account and saw that I already had two friends, others who had invited me to join FB. One has since deleted her account.

Like the current commercial, I came for the friends, and stayed for the connections.  I saw Facebook as a place where people post photos of their grandchildren or their pets. They can post any mundane, fabulous, irrelevant, snarky, pointless, heartbreaking or remarkable thing they want to. It is what it is. Don’t overthink Facebook.

These days I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. I enjoy seeing updates from friends near and far as they unlock life achievements or simply share an interesting item or anecdote of their day. And of course it helps me as a writer share my stories.  On the other hand, it is annoying to see otherwise intelligent friends share MEMEs that inadequately sum up or oversimplify an issue.

The thing is, your “Friends” have always been this way, you just didn’t realize it. Facebook just shined a light on it. You are likely friends with someone because you shared some time and space together not because you shared the same view of Roe v Wade.

My biggest pet peeve about FB, as with any technology, is that people feel that the way they use it is not only the right way, but the only way to use it.

Whose move is it?

Take the picture above.  What they are talking about isn’t really important.  What is important is that theoretically they are on the same side and want the same thing.  But Person_Who_Posted set their security settings so no one could share it.  Person_Who_Commented probably knows they could cut and paste but that is annoying and cumbersome.  They are perhaps, backhandedly, asking Person_Who_Posted to change security settings because it is easier to hit a button.   Does Person_Who_Posted not know they can change the settings on just the one post or do they have a very good but not obvious reason for not changing the settings?  Who should bend?

One of the Facebook Frustrations is the little realized fact that not everyone in your friends list sees everything you post and vice versa. If all your friends posted at 5pm and you logged in, you’d only see a snapshot of the postings. Part of it is technical but most of it is those lovely Facebook algorithms. Not to mention that what you see varies from device to device and web.

Remember the friend I mentioned above who asked me if I was on Facebook?  She never comments on any of my statuses, rarely wishes me a happy birthday and only reaches out when she needs something.  Still I haven’t unfriended her because….at least she’s not like many of my racist friends who I keep sound because I am fond of the time we spent together in a sleepy little backwater college town. 

It’s hard to predict what the future holds in store for Facebook but I think it’s safe to say Facebook is here to stay in one form or another.  Uncle Google tells me that tin or aluminum is an appropriate 10th anniversary gift.  I’d settle for peace and civility.

 

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Writer’s block comes in many forms

If you are a ChicagoNow fan or junkie, you probably have noticed a few changes around here.  Some good like the front page getting updated with new posts more often.  Some questionable like the Ask ChicagoNow posts.  ChicagoNow has always been a Hogwart’s for bloggers and our Dumbledoore left a few months ago (at least he wasn’t killed by the Defense Against the Dark Posts blogger).

They are definitely plotting their next move

At the same time, though unrelated, I have been in a slump since the start of the year. First off, my daytime paying job has been busy, stressful and more demanding than usual.

Second, I’m going through what I refer to as the Groundhog Day Phase with my kids.  Everyday it’s pretty much the same thing:  Fight with them to wake up in the morning, get them dressed and off to daycare.  Then scramble to get to work at a time that is in the ballpark of “Start Time”.   Hope that things are quiet enough that I can leave on time and meet my wife at daycare and bring the mini-tyrants home, feed them and fight with them to go to sleep at a decent time.  Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Finally, while I have from time to time thrown my opinion in on Worldy News Events, things happen so fast that by the time I form a useful opinion on something, many more talented people have already opined on it six different ways to Sunday.

The irony is that this is the best time to be blogging for ChicagoNow because a lot of bloggers aren’t publishing as much and most of the heavy hitters are invisible! Minor leagues like me would get more exposure than ever.

You know how everyone is writing their Jimmy Memorial Posts and recalling how they got their blog started? I had to beg for mine and it was only after CN changed its model and let anyone who wanted to blog (and stopped paying bloggers) blog that I got mine. [No disrespect to Dumbledore, I mean Jimmy, he has been nothing but supportive and helpful.]

Another cost cutting move that the Chicago Tribune made was to eliminate all the stipends for those few bloggers at ChicagoNow who were getting one. I was lucky enough to be one of them. I had a contractual agreement to earn $50.00 a month for my blog for the past several years.

Frankly I’m not surprised because I always knew the CN we know (Hogwart’s for bloggers) couldn’t last forever.  I suspect things are going to change even more and someday ChicagoNow might either go away or become irrelevant. I know blasphemy, right.  My advice is to CN Bloggers is to get all the posts you can out of your system and let whatever happens, happen.  Now to just follow my own advice.

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All I could remember was Goodbye Doesn’t Mean This has to be The End

At the end of the movie Oh Heavenly Dog, this song plays at the end, during the credit roll. I could never figure out what the name of the song was.  I only ever watched it on free OTA TV (because I’ve never paid for cable) and they cut the credits before getting to the song list.  Granted, the last time I watched that movie was before the Internet was a thing.  Over the years I have made halfhearted attempts to figure it out.

All I could really remember were two lines from the song:

Goodbye doesn’t mean this has to be the end
When we return to paradise

Unfortunately, I was looking for a song called “Goodbye doesn’t mean this has to be the end” which is part of the repeating stanza (we’re back to that I don’t know the parts of songs thing again).

When in fact the song is called Return to Paradise.  You’d think I would have found it that way since that was another of the few lines I remembered.  but the internet was young when I first attempted to search for this and I seem to only make the attempt once a decade.

I suspect the last time I tried to google this song, I came across the Elton John video linked here, but didn’t recognize the song.  In the movie the song is much fuller and maybe sped up a bit. So I probably played a few seconds of the song, didn’t recognize it and didn’t stick around to hear the stanza.  Believe it or not, Lyrics to every song out there is more recent than you think.  then got distracted by cat videos.  Luckily IMDB is a little more robust these days.

And let’s talk about those lyrics for a minute.  Man are they Power.  Full.  The song is not just about have to leave a tropical paradise for the cold weather back home.  It is talking about Shagri-la, Xanadu and El Dorado all rolled into one.

I’m heading homeward
Leaving sunshine and heading for rain
But we’ll return to paradise again

I feel like I have just solved another Mystery of Life.

Free Fun Friday is where I like to feature a video that has gone viral or is otherwise interesting. It started as a way to make a quick blog entry so that I wouldn’t go too long between post for my readers. Now it’s sort of evolved as a way to stretch my writing muscles and flex my creativity neural pathways.

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Blogiversary: 5 years at ChicagoNow

Five years ago this week I published my first post.  295 published posts later, the subject matter has obviously changed.  Whenever the anniversary of our first post comes along, bloggers like to write about it because it’s a clever way to make a post about me we sometimes just cannot think of anything else to write about.

I’m gonna share what I’ve learned either in one not too long post or many smaller posts, depending on how much unsolicited wisdom I feel like imparting.

I’m going to focus on blogging at ChicagoNow, though I’m sure a lot of this advice and experience would translate to other platforms.  We are lucky to have the ChicagoNow audience which is backfilled through the Tribune Ecosystem.  Enjoy it while it’s here because nothing lasts forever.

Cute pictures help too

Lesson Zero:  Do not say you just published a new blog!

When referring to a post that you just published, don’t say “I just published a new blog” or “New blog up at MyBlog”.  Unless you literally went from publishing your posts on Baby Sideburn to Mothers who Drink and Swear, It’s incorrect and just makes you look like a moron.

Lesson one: Don’t set yourself up to fail

One of the gimmicks bloggers fall pray to is the 30 days of blogging challenge or promising a series that is way too long.  Unless you already have half of that content ready to go, don’t make promises you cannot keep.  Life will get in the way.  You will lose steam.

Lesson Two: It doesn’t matter when you publish

The real anniversary of my first post is October 1.  But it doesn’t matter when I hit the publish button, within reason.  Obviously I don’t want to wait until November but the Blog Police won’t come after me if this doesn’t post until the middle of the month.  The thing to remember is that a published decent post is infinitely better than an unpublished perfect post.

Lesson Three:  Keep it brief though

I try to keep my posts between 300 and 600 words because society has the attention span of a litter of concussed kittens.  There are some of course where I have more to say but as I learned from my editor days, most articles can be trimmed by ten percent.  There are a handful of bloggers who can get away with excessive wordiness but I’m not usually one of them.

 

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Three bad luck moments that happened at the best time

I refer to this as the Crisis Of the Week, or COW for short. It may not be earth shattering or life threatening, but it generally consumes 80% of your attention. It may not even be an entire week’s length of time. I guess there could be other permutations as well such as:

• COD – Crisis of the Day
• COM – Crisis of the Month
• COY – Crisis of the Year

Lot’s of possibilities.

Then the thing passes. Finals come and go. The deadline arrives and then ends. The breakup occurs. Maybe things were a disaster or maybe they weren’t as bad as they seemed. Whatever happened, the next thing you know, there’s a new new thing on your radar to replace the thing that passed.

Recently my wife and I had three little COWs.  Note: some of these events occurred in the distant past but I only just now got around to publishing this post. 

First COW: my car battery died. My wife was going to pull the car out of the garage into the drive way so we could put spare child car seats in it. But the battery was dead.

Silver lining: we discovered the problem on Sunday of Labor Day weekend instead of Tuesday as I was heading to work.

Second COW: Our not quite 1 year old twins developed hand, foot and mouth disease (I like to say Hoof and Mouth disease for humans). This meant we had to keep them home from daycare — which we still have to pay for!

Silver lining: This happened the Tuesday after Labor Day and we were going out of town the following Friday, which means we only had to scramble for three days instead of a typical week of five.

Third COW: I paid our Home Depot bill twice! This is because I schedule the payment from the Home Depot account and it withdraw from my account, then I also paid it directly from our Joint account.

Silver lining: While $200 is nothing to sneeze at, we will survive being down $200 this month. We will likely buy something else at Home Depot and it will cancel out or eventually HD will send us a check because they are designed to float a balance for all eternity.

The takeaways from this are: 1) it’s never as bad as you think, and 2) while at the time these events occurred, they seemed catastrophic, I can guarantee neither I or my wife even remember how stressful those events were, because they have long since been replaced by other COWs and then more COWs along with a few CODs, COMs and even a COY for good measure.

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Flashes of Confidence

No one has ever accused me of posing an overabundance of Confidence. There have been glints, glimmers, and flashes, but at best I usually oscillate between cautiously optimistic and Fake It Til You Make It, with a heaping helping of Second Guessing thrown in for good measure.

Now the question  I have is, is it Fake it until you make it, or Fake it Til you make it or Fake it Till you make it?

By the way, there is absolutely no point to that last sentence and if I were a better writer, I’d just edit it out, but now that I’ve written it and then written about it, I just can’t seem to let go. Or writing about the sentence. OMG, what if I can’t finish this post because I’m stuck on this shit now?

Let’s get back to Serious for a minute.  Confidence is something you gain when you have successful outcomes and experiences.   And most of my life that was not the case.

Growing up in Humboldt Park, I got my butt kicked a lot for being a white kid in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood.  It doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence when you know any stupid disagreement that kids have is gonna end up with someone starting a fight with you.

I remember being confident (or was it just cocky) in college.  Something changed somewhere during my time at NMSU.  When I first arrived I had confidence but by the end of my time there I lost my confidence.

And of course, any Modicum of Sureness after college was beaten out of me at my first job in Corporate America.

Even when good opportunities with lots of potential presented themselves, I would somehow either fuck them up myself or they would not match my perhaps disproportionate expectations.

I still don’t really have confidence so much as Bravado, or as it’s known by its scientific name: chutzpah.  At this age, my confidence is more just not having many fucks to give about things. I don’t back down and crumble when a friend doesn’t like something I say on Facebook.  I stand up for myself and defend myself better, though I willingly adapt my thinking upon receiving new factual information, like when I’m really being a jackass.

In a nutshell, I’ve become Bugs Bunny and that rabbit oozes confidence.

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My 3 Justifications for Procrastination

I usually procrastinate for one of two reasons. The first is that I really don’t want to do something I have to do, but cannot get out of doing it so I put it off as long as possible.

The second reason is, I do it as a challenge. In my former life as a paralegal, I had reach a point where there was just nothing to learn and no where to go. Nothing I did required much brain power, it was just manage paperwork and jump at attorney commands. In order to keep myself engaged, I would often wait until the last minute to start on something just to have the challenge of getting it done on time.

And the reward for finishing one of those assignments is getting assigned a new boring task. https://t.co/IeJF6YJdwc via @Dilbert_Daily

— Mysteries of Life (@MysteriesOLife) March 23, 2017

Recently I discovered another reason I procrastinate.    In my line of work I sometimes have to do tasks that are painful and useless.  This happens a lot in Corporate America where you are assigned tasks that are so mind numbing and boring that your brain literally tries to escape out your ears.  And my reward for finishing the task is: I get assigned another painful and useless task.

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Do you procrastinate?  If so, how do you justify it?

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