Tag: old man

The perils of getting younger in the workforce

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I seldom feel as old whenever I stop and take a few steps back and look at my job, and ponder how many of the aggravations and gripes I have stem from the fact that my company hires a lot of younger people, as opposed to older professionals with actual work experience.

Sure, there’s merit to hiring young from a corporate standpoint, they lack the leverages of experience and work history to where companies feel like they hold the advantage when it comes to negotiating salary and benefits.  Younger workers are often believed to be malleable to fit into existing cultures, and the theory is that they still have enthusiasm and energy, and hope that they can inject such into workforces that are tired and jaded by a history of Office Space.

However on the flipside, younger workers lack the work ethic the generations before them have, and their overlap with older workforces often creates a culture clash that companies are still trying to figure out the calculus on how to combat and work through in order to have a harmonious environment.  You can’t push younger workers too hard, lest they immediately start updating their LinkedIn profiles and start looking for an exit.

If it isn’t obvious, the impetus of this post stems not just from a recent resignation of a colleague under the age of 28, but of months and months of being a part of a company that has demonstrated the tendency to hire on the younger side of the spectrum as opposed to possibly more professional candidates, and I feel like it’s leading to a lot of the day-by-day issues that are emerging and compounding as time progresses.

The recent resignation sucks, because this person was basically the point person of this retail campaign that my company is in the midst of trying to launch.  Their departure creates a noticeable hole in the workflow of the project, and until their successor can be identified, implemented and brought up to speed, the project is effectively on pause, because despite them still being present for their two-week notice, they’ve already basically stopped working on anything, instead of you know, trying to leave on good terms and tie up as many loose ends as they can.

But just in general, I work with a bunch of kids on certain teams, and them being kids means they’re all flaky and terrible communicators and spam up our internal Teams channels with gifs as a means of communication as opposed to actual fucking words.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m trying to not be nearly as age-ist as I’ve heard some of them be, they’re rather pleasant and easy to chat with on a personal level, but when the temperature at work starts to rise from time to time, very few of them have the fortitude or tenacity to keep their shit together, and their bad habits tend to come out when things heat up.

But the biggest thing is though, like I said before, you can’t push them without chasing them away.  The turnover at my company in the three years that I’ve been here has felt pretty absurd, and I feel like it’s this downward spiral where young workers are hired, crumble under the pressure of real-world work, bolt after 6-8 months, creating a shitshow for the teams they abandoned; their backfills are also young workers, but entering a worse environment than their predecessors, crumble under the pressure and then bolt, and the cycle has been repeating itself, but with things continuously getting worse, rather than showing any signs of stabilization or recovery.

I get that the workplace in general is changing and loyalty and longevity mean dick and butt these days, and it’s not necessarily age-related when it comes to people bouncing in short order, but it doesn’t help the narrative and reputation that it is, when it’s mostly the younger workers of the workforce, that are exorcising this right the most frequently.

Seeing as how this is a thing that more of a cultural shift as opposed to something that can be fixed, it’s times like these where I wish I could just work for myself, but the reality is that I don’t know what I’d do for a living, let alone make ends meet and support my family.

If only I could get paid, generously, to brog about inane bullshit and the happenings in my life, that would be the ultimate dream come true.  But since that’ll never happen, it’s remaining in the downward spiral vortex, and just simply holding onto my butt and hope one day improvements occur.  At least I’m not under the draconian thumb of my old boss, but frankly, it’s not okay to constantly keep that comparison in my back pocket to justify other bad workplace behavior.

Dad Brog (#140): Disney Trip 2024

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Being both passholders as well as Disney Vacation Club, it goes without saying that my family spends a good bit of time going to Disney World.  Personally, I’m pretty long past over most anything in regards to The Mouse, but my wife and kids still enjoy it a lot, and there’s not much I won’t do for them, especially when I have little idea what to do with my vacation time in the first place.

However, the big story of this last extended Disney trip was Hurricane Helene, which I didn’t even know was bubbling up in the Gulf of Mexico until two days into the trip, when suddenly everyone in person and on social media are talking about this megastorm that’s forming, and how it’s not only going to wreak havoc on Florida where we were, but appeared to have Atlanta firmly in its crosshairs, leading me to feel all sorts of anxiety about shit happening to my home while I wasn’t there.

Fortunately for us, the storm conditions didn’t really come into play until the last day of our trip, to which at that point we were pretty bushed and fairly content to spend more time at the resort than more time at the parks, and it didn’t really affect our trip.

In fact, other than watching some serious winds from the safety and comfort of our resort, not only did we avoid the storm in Florida, much to my relief, Helene kind of banked hard east, which we all know by now, really fucked the western parts of Appalachian North Carolina, but as far as Atlanta was concerned, really managed to avert disaster.

It was interesting driving back, because as we traversed from Orlando back to Georgia, there was plenty of evidence of the carnage that Helene brough, even as far central as I was coming from, with trees down all over the shoulders and sides of the road, and pretty much every billboard in the state was stripped and barren.  Piles of sawdust on the shoulders indicated where trees actually affected the highways themselves, and this was the case all the way up into Georgia, and right before getting to Macon, it all kind of stopped, and this was presumably where the storm banked hard east, and miraculously swerved past Atlanta.

Insert ironic joke about how not even category-4 storms don’t want to visit Atlanta.

As for the rest of the trip, I wouldn’t exactly call it a vacation; I knew this was most likely going to be the circumstances going into it.  It was a trip, and there was a tremendous amount of work involved, wrangling the little monsters of mine, who are bursting with excitement and curiosity and the want to run around and explore the vast World of Disney, and as is often times the case, the lion’s share of labor falls to me to do, and I don’t really get to have the same sense of vacation, relaxation, recuperation and entertainment as everyone else does.

There were really only two things that I wanted to do that would have been self-serving and when the trip was done, I didn’t get to do either of them.  Between kid wrangling, the time it takes to do absolutely anything at all, and the weather coming into play, there simply wasn’t any space for anything for me to happen, and the fact of the matter is that as much as I love my kids, if there’s any chance at all for me to not go completely sour on Disney World and the Disney brand, there have got to be some kid-free trips lined up in my future where I can actually relax, unwind and not be a dad for a fucking minute.

I kind of knew what had happened was going to happen, and that it really wasn’t going to be that much of a vacation for me personally.  But my kids and their safety always come first, and trying to keep them in a modicum of line is also high priority, and it’s often times frustrating when trying to stick to good habits while on the road is challenging, and even more so when I don’t really have anyone but myself to rely upon to handle the load of keeping an eye on my kids.

But the girls seemed to have a good time in spite of the weather and some of the challenges experienced while there.  They got to ride a lot of rides, eat a lot of junk food, spend some time with me at the pool, see a lot of characters, eat more snacks, and watch a whole lot of television at the resort and while in the car, so as long as they’re happy, I can take victory from that.

I just wish that I didn’t have to feel like I have to be the one who constantly has to sacrifice everything, because I already feel like I’ve sacrificed just about everything that makes me, me, and there’s really nothing left for me to sacrifice left, except for whatever it is that prevents me from being a complete husk of a living organism.

Predictable, to those with knowledge

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Twas the night of the trade deadline, and the Braves were in the middle of the pack.  The Phillies have the division, and Atlanta’s grip on Wild Card #1 has been slippery as of late.  Max Fried is on the DL, joining Ozzie Albies and Michael Harris II, while Ronald Acuña, Jr. and Spencer Strider are done for the year.  Reynaldo Lopez has tightness in his forearm. 

Those not injured, are not performing, save for Marcell Ozuna and a resurgent Jarred Kelenic, but Matt Olson, Austin Riley, Adam Duvall and Orlando Arcia definitely are about as reliable as a Dodge Caliber this season.  Aside from Chris Sale, the pitching staff is in shambles due to the loss of Strider and Fried, as Father Time has clearly caught up to Charlie Morton, and the revolving door of Bryce Elder, Spencer Schwellenbach and whomever was scheduled to pitch in Double-A or Triple-A has been less than effective.

Weeks leading up to the trade deadline, there was all sorts of buzz about what the Atlanta Braves should do, to patch their weaknesses, reinforce their offense and build for the playoffs that they are no guarantee to even make.  Braves fans in Facebook communities, blogs and websites all throwing out ideas, mostly putrid, but occasional logical ones, about the things the teams should do in order to accomplish all of the above mentioned.

And whenever this time of the baseball season comes up, there are always these types of fans:

  • Trade everything for [Mike Trout] and [Shohei Ohtani] – fans who don’t really know much about baseball economics and think that in real sport, you can make trades like an EA game and trade Derek Harper for Penny Hardaway straight up
  • Trade absolutely nothing at all because there’s no chance the return on investment will be worth the cost of assets being given up – internet bean-counters who know way too much about baseball economics and have this intrinsic belief that absolutely every baseball transaction possible much be “a win,” that every trade partner must “lose” the trade, and if such conditions don’t seem likely, don’t make it, regardless of how many moving parts there are and the unpredictability of player performance
  • And then there are people like me, crabby old fucks who have been following sports for a very long time, have recognized patterns and tendencies for the teams they follow, are mostly cynical and nihilistic about the likely realities about to befall their preferred teams, and the degrees and willingness to opine their opinions may vary

I used to not engage with rando-communities, but probably a combination of boredom, and that The Algorithm is spoon-feeding me content that pops enough synapses in my brain to drop random comments on various accounts, most of them being Braves communities where I occasionally wish to voice my displeasure with AJ Minter, Bryce Elder, and how the team would be best suited to sign the still-available Trevor Bauer, if he didn’t have this freakishly obviously collusion to blacklist him from the entire league over his head.

I don’t pay much concern over the reactions my words get, and I definitely don’t interact with other users beyond a laughing emoji at the response that are actually decent, but it’s really nothing different from any online community anywhere on the internet: people making wild trade scenarios, trade everything fans bickering with trade nothing fans, and so forth.

More recently, I decided to chime in to a few Braves communities, and I opined that the Braves aren’t doing to make any moves at all beyond a fourth outfielder-type and a relief pitcher; I figured the remark were just enough snarky without me having to blather on about how The Braves Way™ is that of crippling risk-aversion and hand-cuffing cheapness, which it totally is by the way.

And when the trade deadline lapsed, and the evening crossed midnight, where transactions that begun before the deadline needed to be finalized by, and all the smoke of the day’s activities had cleared up, the Atlanta Braves had made only one transaction-trading injured relief pitcher Tyler Matzek and minor league infielder Sabin Ceballos for:

Jorge Soler, outfielder
Luke Jackson, relief pitcher

At this point, all I could really do is shrug like Michael Jordan in the 1992 NBA Finals, after he drowned the Portland Trailblazers in a barrage of three-pointers as if to say, that was easy.  I’ve been following the Braves for a pretty long time now, and I’ve seen this song and dance before.  Save for a few exceptions throughout the years, the majority of the years, the Braves always seem convinced that the only things they ever need at the trade deadline is another outfielder and another relief pitcher, and that all other needs can be filled internally (cheaply) – That’s The Braves Way™!

In this season’s case, they’re not wrong that they needed some help on both accounts, but the fact of the matter is that the starting rotation has two gaping holes in it, and the team has been incapable of scoring runs the vast majority of the season. 

All around the league were decent talents from teams who were out of playoff contention and thrown in the towel, trying to improve their futures at the price of said decent talents available for trade.  And as the days ticked down to the trade deadline, they would come off the board, one by one, with the Phillies picking up Carlos Estevez from the Angels, the Yankees getting Jazz Chisholm, Jr. from the Marlins, the Dodgers getting Jack Flaherty from the Tigers, to name a few examples of front-running contenders actively trying to get even better for the stretch run.

And once again, the Braves sit on their hands all trade season long, and do nothing but pick up a fourth outfielder and a relief pitcher.  I’ve seen this rerun, many, many times in my life now.

For those keeping score, in spite of all the Braves’ many needs, the only outside acquisitions they’ve really made this season, was picking up Soler and Jackson, as well as a few weeks ago, picking up Eddie Rosario from the Washington Nationals’ literal trash after they had designated him for assignment.  Obviously, all of these guys were notable contributors to the 2021 World Series winnings squad, and it’s evident that the Braves’ front office is trying to challenge the intelligence of fans and supporters of the team by bringing back these nostalgia acts, as if they’re miraculously going to turn the team’s fortune around, three years later, older and used.

It goes without saying that the Braves have thrown in the towel on the year themselves, by their sheer lack of willingness to invest and improve.  Of course they will never admit it, but it seems pretty evident that they’re phoning in the roster on account of all the injuries that have decimated the roster, and probably thinking, we’ll just try again next season;  regardless of the fact that Max Fried is probably gone, as probably is Marcell Ozuna who is playing his ass off in a walk year, two of the most competent players on the current roster.

They’ll assume Chris Sale will reward their investment into his bounceback, Spencer Strider will recover to 110%.  That this season was not a fluke for Reynaldo Lopez, and that between Elder, Schwellenbach and Hurston Waldrep,* they can go back to the glory days of Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz.

*could these names get any whiter?

They’ll also assume Acuña and Harris will recover fully, Albies will get back to his All-Star form and Olson and Riley will bounce back.  Arcia might be the only guy on the hot seat, but I’m under the impression that Braves Corporate is already envisioning a fresh start in 2025 with all of their current assets in place, and that 2024 is already a lost cause, and any success to come from it would be considered a bonus.

At this point, it’s actually a bad thing for the Braves front office if the team does well enough to have a little playoff run, and then get bounced in the NLDS again.  Because then there will be all sorts of hindsight fire, criticism and accusations that the organization didn’t do enough to improve the team to where they might have pushed across the finish line for more success, instead of sputtering to another early playoff exit.

But if and when it happens, it’s not like it’s something that most older Braves fans haven’t seen before.  Such is, the curse of having knowledge sometimes.

Take that, job hoppers

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Yahoo Finance: wage growth for job hoppers slowing down as labor markets cool

One of the many things that I’ve had to accept as a changing of the times kind of the thing is has been the growing acceptance of job hopping in the working world.  I was more or less raised on the mindset of getting myself into a company, staying for my entire career, earning pension, retirement and all the benefits that come with longevity, and then work my entire career for a single company.

Obviously the world does change, and I don’t disagree that there’s little point in staying somewhere if you become miserable or the game of finances doesn’t seem to be keeping competitive to the market, but mostly if you’re just not plain happy, or you get laid off of released for any litany of reasons.  It’s naïve to think that anyone is going to stay with a singular place of employment for 30+ years anymore.

But as the years have gone by, the working world has gotten to the point where employees spend less and less time at employers before deciding to bounce, and it no longer seems like it’s people having lower thresholds for bullshit as much as it is that people today are just bigger flakes and indecisive and easily swayed by the shiny thing on the other side of the fence instead of remotely trying to have a stable career somewhere.

I used to tell myself that no matter what, to give every place at least a year before exploring a change.  A year seemed like an adequate amount of time to really learn about the highs and lows of a company, learn about the commutes, the types of people you work with, how they operate holidays and busy seasons, etc.

My first job after I moved to Atlanta, I stuck it out a year.  At first, it was great, but then the commute became murderous and the superiors in my company weaned off the honeymoon period and became really toxic to everyone.  I was the third or fourth resignation in a rapid exodus, because I found a job that was way closer to home, and paid a little bit more money, but honestly I do chalk it up as a mistake because I realized that I hated the work and the line of business I was in.

I didn’t quite make it a year at this place, but that was because they laid off my entire team, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because I got with a place where I stayed for nearly four years, before my entire team was laid off there as well, which put me into a tumultuous life of freelance for many years, before I got my foot in the door with the state.  I stayed there for three years before a lack of growth, wages and just general boredom led to a messy divorce, and then I made another career mistake by bouncing to a place that was again closer and paid better, but the nature of the work and the dynamics of the company were hell.

This was actually the first time in my career I bounced before a year, because I was miserable and wanted out.  It was a move I don’t regret, and where I really had to self-reflect a lot on my choice to deviate from my original mindset, but it was for the best, because I ended up somewhere where I spent the largest tenure in my career.

But when coronavirus and the age of COVID-19 came upon the world, it transformed the world to closer where we are now.  My shortest tenure at a place was six months, but I was now beginning to witness people barely staying at a company for six weeks before deciding to bounce.  I remember assessing and trying to sniff out flight risk when combing through resumes and interviews at my old job, because my company and department in particular had a tendency to attract a lot of people who were looking for means to get their foot in the door, and as soon as their probationary period ended, would capitalize on the favoritism of internal associates to swap to a different team.

However, it wasn’t just internal bouncing, people just weren’t sticking around the company, or any other company, anywhere.  People would come, and just when it seemed like things would settle down on the team or company, suddenly there’d be news of them having turned in their notice, and the company and/or team was back to square one.

I get that when the day is over, everyone does have to take care of number #1, but the reality is that when they take a job that they’re not gung-ho over, and keep their options open and get a bite somewhere shinier, they really are fucking over the employer, which nobody is going to lose any sleep over, but a whole bunch of colleagues who might not all be soul sucking shitheads that deserve such disrespectful dismissal, are typically going to get shortchanged in that they’re losing a co-worker who was hired to be depended upon for what is usually hoped to be a for a semi-permanent amount of time.

The positions that are suddenly vacated all have to start over from square one, and there’s no guarantee that all other possible candidates are on the board anymore.  Most places have to go through the whole process from the beginning, meaning they have to vet and bot resumes all over again, interview a set number of candidates, and for anyone whom they’re crawling back to, lose leverage and face towards someone that wanted the job previously, and are now looking at the employer with their own set of resentment and likely notion to flake on them increases.

Before I left my last job, we too were no stranger to the COVID-prompted mass migration of employment, and lots of people, those I knew or knew of, were bouncing out of the company left and right.  Meanwhile, the power vacuum as a result of such departures led to a lot of shitty unqualified fucks to get some high up positions, and by the time I threw in the towel and left, I was in a position where my cunt of a boss was actively trying to get me out the door.

Sure, I did migrate during COVID, and got a sweet 26% pay bump in the process, but honestly if my work-life wasn’t as toxic as it had become, I probably would’ve stayed and not even entertained the thought of looking somewhere else.  I really didn’t want to leave, but my boss forced my hand.

But at my current place of employment, I’m in but just year three now, but I’ve already witnessed an inordinate amount of people who have started working for the company, and within as little as two months, seen them bounce, leading to myself and everyone else to throw their hands up and basically say what the fuck?

And of course they’re taking care of themselves, but several of these people really did fuck over my team with their general flakiness, and this is why I’m starting to relish in the notion that job hopping’s notion of getting better money or better positions is starting to diminish, because I do feel some salt and some want for retribution towards this entitled and lazy, flaky workforce that has gotten the working world to this sorry state we’re in currently.

Maybe if more people are “forced” to stick with their jobs that they’re fortunate to have in the first place, perhaps companies can actually get some teams that gel and become competent through experience and tenure, and become you know, better companies, that produce better products and services, and suddenly miraculously become more successful based on performances from their workforces.

But fuck me right, everyone’s got to take care of themselves, and it’s okay to bounce every six months?

I wonder what it says that I relate so well to mommy bloggers

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In the connected world we live in full of prying digital eyes and ears that seem to exist solely to collate information for algorithms and targeted content, I was fed this blog article from some mommy blogger, talking about how lonely it felt being everyone’s B-list friend.

It was a headline that I immediately knew what it was going to be about before I even started to read it, but like a masochist I clicked on it out of curiosity to see how someone else felt about this fairly accurately named affliction.

And unsurprisingly, I feel as if this entire article could have been written by me, except with a little more feminine eloquence and emotional neediness.  But I definitely felt this article so very hard, and the examples of where they were resultantly made to feel B-list resonate so much with me, especially since becoming a parent, and transitioning into the inevitable zone of I have kids and lots of my friends don’t, and the gradual position of not only being excluded by everyone, but also no longer even considered for invitation.

I’m seldom mad or upset about it, that just seems to be the way life is for people who age and people who have children, but one thing I’ve always said is that there is tremendous power and consideration in the act of the ask alone, and although I know and most everyone knows that asking me do something is nine times out of ten going to result in a no I can’t, I always appreciate the ask, because it makes me feel like people still think and consider me.

Honestly though, even before kids, I felt this way a lot of the time, mostly because I was the sad-sack single guy for eternity, and I get that nobody always wanted an odd-numbered wheel on their activities.  Things improved a little bit once mythical girlfriend-now-wife came into the picture, but now that we have children and have stepped onto a less-adjacent plane of existence as most everyone around us, going back onto the B-list feels more prevalent than ever.

But going back to the article, it clearly hit home hard enough to pop the synapses in my brain to want to write about it, because it was that thought-provoking.  I don’t think it hurts me as much as it hurts the author of this post, but I see, I acknowledge and I can relate to so much of this.

Frankly if I’m being honest here, the only people in my life that I don’t feel like put me on the B-list are my children.  As much as I bemoan the workload sometimes, feel like I’m overwhelmed and tired of being a parent at times, when the day is over, my girls are the only ones who don’t make me feel like I’m B-list ever.  When they have bad dreams and wake up at night, they call for me.  When it’s the morning and they know it’s time to get up and have breakfast, they know it’s me.  When they’re distressed and need a hug and snuggle, they come to me.

This isn’t to say I resent everyone else for making me feel like I’m B-list.  Everyone else just has their own shit going on their lives, and it’s easy to take a self-sufficient machine like me for granted.  I feel like everyone else already does a lot of the time, and I don’t always feel comfortable expressing such opinions too often, so it’s just the norm.

I agree with the author that it’s not good to measuring self-worth by the effort others put into our relationships, but at the same time, it’s also kind of impossible to ignore the scales of relationships and when those around us are putting us into the B-list.  It’s always easy to say one thing, but doing them is a whole different matter, and in this particular case, it’s not necessarily a bad thing to struggle with chessboard of where we’re positioned, because frankly I think it’s human nature that everyone does, and those who don’t are either blind or lying.

All the same though, going back to the title of this post, I wonder what it says about me, that such thought-provoking mommy content is what is fed to me, and resonates with me so much.

Kid-free weekend musings

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I haven’t had to wake up before the sun rises to prepare and have breakfast ready for when my kids awake, I’ve still been getting up early.  The first morning, I had forgotten to disable my alarms that ensure that I’m up for the morning routine, and the second morning, the dog whined and woke me up because I had disabled my alarms but that meant she was stuck in the bedroom at the time in which her feeder would go off.

All the same, the idea of going back to sleep didn’t really cross my mind because I’m a neurotic doer who unfortunately often times sees sleep as a means to an end, and as much as I’d like to get more sleep in my life, as long as I feel like there’s an endless queue of things that need to be done instead, those will often times keep me out of bed despite knowing what pleasure sleeping without an alarm clock can bring.

So instead of sleeping more, or preparing a breakfast for the kids, I’ve actually had some calm mornings where I could actually feel a little bit like an old iteration of me for a little bit.  I went on a leisurely morning walk, alternatively to the virtual Peachtree Road Race I ran the morning prior.  I came back drenched in sweat because it’s humid as balls, but then I came home, changed clothes, logged into work, and unsurprisingly had a very slow remote day, where I was able to accomplish all sorts of side quests throughout the day.

Like hanging some picture frames that needed the 22 ft. ladder that I never get a chance to do when the kids are around, got an emissions test on my third car, went to the DMV to renew the tags and got out in two minutes because I used the self-serve kiosk that nobody else uses which left me feeling really good.  I did some kid laundry which felt good to not have to try to do it in a window in which they’re not sleeping so the noises don’t distract them, and I even got a new shelf for my garage to tidy up the shoe tornado that living in a home with nothing but females often results in.

Needless to say, I had a productive day which always puts me in a positive frame of mind, and I decided to reward myself by finally watching Fast X; a completely dumb movie which is about as surprising as white people liking Rivians, but also unsurprisingly enjoyable for me, even if I didn’t know that it was going to be a two-parter.

I won’t give anything away, but I have to say that casting Jason Momoa for the role he’s in seems like a whiff of colossal proportions.  I feel like the number one priority for the role was “look like he could be South American” but they didn’t take into account any of the character’s mannerisms, personality traits or general perceived look.  And as hunky as Momoa is, the reality is that he’s not a very talented actor, and it really says something when a Fast & Furious installment has pushed his acting chops beyond his capabilities.

All the same, can’t wait for the next one, which I feel like has to be the actual finale to the series.  Vin Diesel’s not getting any younger and it’s looking as such, the character development is heading in a direction that I’d say should be irreversible, but they seem to throw caution to the wind when it comes to those kind of rules, and the only thing I will give away is that Paul Walker’s character is still fucking alive despite the fact that the actor has been dead since Fast 7; they just can’t keep this ruse up forever!

Anyway, this morning, after the dog woke me up at 7:26am which might as well be 10am for me, I thought about possibly going back to sleep after taking her out to pee; but after we came back inside, the bowl was empty, because the feeder was empty because the dog eats like a horse, but then the tub of extra food was empty, which meant that I had to open up the new 40 lb. bag of dog food to fill the tub and feeder and bowl, and at that point I was just like fuck it, I’m staying up.

So, I got back on the horse and went for a run.  I’ve been coming to the grips that at this juncture in my life, my running speed isn’t what it used to be, and short of making some actual adjustments to my way of life, I don’t think it will get back there.  I’d been struggling to keep my pace under the 10 minute/mile as of late, and I chalked it up to poor diet, habits and complacency, and I was able to get it back down under ten, but that also was the result of several consecutive days of running while I was at my sister’s place in Richmond without having to be a parent.

My Virtual Peachtree was completed in 1:04:36, which I’m pretty sure the slowest timed 10K I’ve done since I started doing organized runs back in 2007 which was a little disappointing, but as I said, unless I really make some changes to a lot of things in my life, like taking stat points away from weight lifting and eating and putting them into running, things aren’t going to get any better as I age.

It’s a little inevitable since Father Time is undefeated, and the sooner I accept it, the less angst I’ll have about running as a whole.

So, I ran while trying to keep that mindset in place, and ran in a manner which didn’t have me gasping for air when I inevitably failed to complete a sub-30 minute 5K, which was the case, and just took solace in the fact that I was up and doing something, and when it comes to exercising, I’m fortunate to have always had the mindset that it is always a good use of time.

I’m not the fastest runner or strongest lifter, but I can confidently say that I’m probably the most consistent and dedicated exerciser that I know.  It’s never been a fad, it’s never been something I’ve done to attain a physical goal.  I made the choice to start hitting the gym and exercising back in 2006, and short of a few exceptions like coronavirus lockdowns, have I ever taken an extended period of time off from it.

No matter how down on life I might feel, how envious of the lives, accomplishments and lifestyles of other people, I feel like I always have exercise to fall back onto.  It is never a waste of time, and often times it helps get my head in a better place than which it started, or at least get my brain chugging along, which is what brought us to this point where I’ve been able to blather on so seamlessly this morning, after the run.

Rawdogging has got to be the dumbest flex in recent times

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Although there have been a few positive exceptions, social media has mostly spawned nothing but bullshit since, well, the inception of social media.  From stuff as stupid as kids eating Tide pods, illegal activities like teaching people how to steal Kias and Hyundais, to all sort of pointless, stupid bullshit often dubbed challenges like pretending to slip and fall in grocery stores while holding milk cartons or weird dances in public places.

Sure it’s easy to just chalk up my attitude being a grumpy old man, but I have a hard time trying to justify peoples’ defense of claiming that things are just fun, if they’re inconveniencing others, or you know, committing crimes.

Recently, I saw this thing where people are apparently bragging about their ability to ride on airplanes and do absolutely nothing at all.  No headphones to listen to music, no watching any in-flight entertainment, no napping, no snacks, seemingly no bathroom breaks, just sitting and doing absolutely nothing at all.  Some of these braggarts might have a cup of coffee that they brought onto the flight, or are allowing themselves to watch the flight status screen, but for all intents and purposes, they’re partaking in a challenge known as raw dogging flights, aka doing absolutely nothing at all for as long as they can.

For some reason, it seems to be limited to men participating in this flexing contest, and I’ve (unfortunately) seen people flexing seven hours, ten hours, 14 hours, on flights within the United States, and transcontinental flights to other countries.  Dudes boasting about how they raw dogged these flights, as if its something to be proud of to be so devoid of anything in their heads that they can stare mindlessly in front of them and absolutely nothing else.

Don’t get me wrong, my life has been chaotic to the point where I have been in the position to where I do want to just stare at a wall and do absolutely nothing, but with my inherent doer mentality, even at my worst, I probably could only last like 20-30 minutes before my brain turns back on and I feel the necessity to be making good use of my time instead of squandering it.

What I wouldn’t give  to have an hour, much less 7-11 hours on a flight to do all sorts of activities that I typically can’t do when I’m in my ordinary life because I’m so in the trenches of being a dad.  I would read books, magazines, I would write brog posts, I would binge television shows and movies from the list of titles that I’ve been trying to keep track of over the years since becoming a parent.  I’d listen to music, or play a video game, but the idea of squandering any bit of free time that flights inadvertently provide would be completely out of the question.

A long time ago, I was on a flight from Atlanta to Toronto, and I was reading a book.  I was seated next to this girl who appeared to be inadvertently raw dogging the flight, and at first I thought it was strange, but I was minding my own business.  After a while, I noticed how fidgety she was, and that she had skimmed through the in-flight magazine and it was pretty apparent that she was bored.  Finally, I put my book down, and asked her if she were bored, to which began a pleasant conversation for the remainder of our flight, how she was from Guadalajara, and learned a lot of English from watching English-language television, but the point being raw dogging was such a terrible experience that conversing with a total stranger was preferrable over it.

When I went on a work trip last year, I couldn’t wait to get on the plane, because of all the free time that awaited me once my ass was in the seat.  ATL to LAX meant I would have almost four hours to myself, and once we took off, I knocked out like two brog posts, and then watched half of the latest season of Castlevania and several episodes of the live-action One Piece.  After landing in Los Angeles, I felt productive and accomplished and got my head in a good place going into a work trip.  The flight back saw more Netflix and more writing and frankly catching up on my writing queue as well as binging through two shows that I had wanted to watch was a bigger accomplishment than lots of the work crap I had to do during the trip.

Very soon, I have a small flight coming up; it’s only going to Florida, so the in-air time is only going to be barely more than an hour.  But I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit and stare blankly in silence on the flight, because that’s an hour in which I could read a book that I haven’t finished yet, maybe knock out a brog post of something that I might’ve wanted to write about and haven’t had the time to do.  Or maybe I’ll put something to watch on my iPad and enjoy an episode or two or half of a movie.

The point is, raw dogging is about the stupidest thing to have ever been come up with in recent history, and I can’t help but express disdain for it as a whole.  All these brainless dorks flexing that the ability to do it is something to be proud of, clearly have little in their heads or are completely okay with wasting time that could be better used for any sort of things that aren’t just burning a large number of hours staring at nothing but a shitty 3D model of a flight screen.