A Dull Boy

So here are some of the things that make Jack a dull, or at least non-blogging, boy:

–All work and no play, as so persuasively documented elsewhere.

–A website-building project for a friend, which involves hours and hours of staring into this little laptop screen and plenty of tinkering with “code.” I’m in maybe the 2nd percentile of the code-literate world, but it can be both satisfying and numbing to embark on a day of web-browser trial and error.

–Paying bills. Amazing that that still brings a feeling of having done something.

–Two or three busy weeks at work, what with some new president in office and a local police force making news by killing an unarmed, unresisting man in front of a bunch of people with cellphone cameras running.

–And then there’s the matter of working at a place where layoffs are imminent. My own fate is unclear, but that’s almost — almost, I said — beside the point. Since I left the then-secure world of unionized newsroom employment in mid-90s, I’ve lost count of the number of layoffs I’ve seen firsthand. I’ve had a hand in laying off hundreds of people myself, and even had one of the laid-off people challenge me to a fight. I’ve been laid off myself. Having seen the process close up from different vantage points, I’m only sure that the process is never clean or humane and rarely competently handled. So yeah, that’s on my mind.

–Neglecting my various communication duties. And no, I’m not counting Facebook or Twitter as “communication.”

All for now. Even a dullard needs his sleep.