Personal

“… With the Army You Have.”

No Comments

You know that old saying — that you go to war with the army you have? I think the assertion contains a salutary bit of wisdom that, at least for me, surfaces too often in the breach.

The last few days have been a bit melancholy. Not in a bad or debilitating way, but more in a “what if?” sense that’s probably more adolescent #FOMO than anything, even though I’ve been riding the situation’s logic train for almost a week now. The proximate cause of this thinking is isn’t worth relaying here. The upshot, though, is that I caught myself going through some sort of Kübler-Ross cycle, wherein I saw X, pretended it was Y, got pissed that it really was X, resolved to do Z, realized that Z was not a short-term solution … then I understood that X wasn’t any of my business and that Y and Z were fundamentally irrational responses, anyway.

So there’s that.

But.

The whole “Z” resolution — even though it’s a valid idea that’s actually been on my to-do list for a few years now — has sat on that to-do list for reasons that (it just occurred to me!) are both good and bad.

The “Z” resolution, to be less cryptic, is to get back to my “trim” weight. Long-time blog readers know the story, but for the n00bz out there, the TL;DR version is: In my teens and into my late 20s, I was morbidly obese. Then I lost about half my bodyweight over a year and a half and even did late-night long-distance runs for fun. I kept the pounds off for several years, then gained a goodly chunk of it back after a long-untreated bout of serious Vitamin D deficiency. Since that D thing stabilized, my weight has been constant; a quick perusal of MyFitnessPal shows that the last four or so years have been a weight plateau.

The plateau is higher than I want, hence the goal to get back to around 160. Which is eminently doable, although it’s not lost on me that there’s a strong correlation between my BMI and the atrociousness of my weekly schedule. And there are lots of good reasons for a second round of weight loss: Improved cardiovascular performance. Lower risk of heart failure and stroke. Lower risk of type-2 diabetes. Reduced odds of breaking a chair when you sit on it.

But there’s also a “bad” reason for losing weight, which for me is rooted in the fact that I’m not attracted to people who look like me. Ergo, I subconsciously consider myself unattractive; ergo² it’s been quite a few years since I’ve made any serious attempt at cultivating physical or emotional human intimacy.

It occurs to me that some people do find me attractive. I know it’s true; I do get some attention on those rare occasions I foray into the Vast Online Meatmarket of various personals apps.

You go to war with the army you have. You wade into the dating pool with the profile you have. Not everyone wins every battle, but your odds of winning here and there are significantly higher if you march toward the field than if you never venture from the safety of your camp in the first place.

A lesson to remember.

Healthcare Quality & Analytics, Personal

Updates: Annapolis, Bats & More!

No Comments

Where to begin?

Maryland Association for Healthcare Quality

I flew to Annapolis on Wednesday to speak at one of the semi-annual educational conferences of the Maryland Association for Healthcare Quality. I’ve known the MAHQ president, Monica, for several years; in fact, she keynoted the Michigan Association for Healthcare Quality conference I hosted in Traverse City two years ago. Lovely lady.

The MAHQ event lasted one full day. My colleague Gayle ran the morning session — about advanced Excel tips and an introduction to some intermediate-level statistical concepts — and I led the three-hour afternoon block. My session focused on the “why” of health data analytics; I presented a list of characteristics of a high-performing team, then I presented real-life use cases illuminating the value of each characteristic.

I also presented what’s increasingly my personal call-to-action about health data analytics:

Health care is in a value crisis precipitated by suboptimal structures and misaligned incentives. We’ve mostly eaten the low-hanging fruit from IOM/IHI. The sole remaining path for driving improvements in cost/outcomes/access/satisfaction rests in data-driven PI initiatives. Yet, our industry’s capability is still in its infancy. Until we get smart about data, costs will go up — and we’ll continue to inflict avoidable harm or even death on the patients we serve.

On a personal note, it was lovely to have dinner with Gayle and Stephanie at the Severn Inn on Wednesday. Our table overlooked the Severn River, immediately across the water from the United States Naval Academy. The cover photo for this post, in fact, was taken from the Inn’s parking lot. And on Thursday, Monica took me to the Fleet Reserve Club, where she’s a member, to enjoy drinks and to see the sights along the Ego Alley (Spa River) waterfront. A lovely experience.

This trip also marked my first time flying United Airlines. Good experience. The planes were in clean condition. The flight attendant on the ORD-to-BWI leg was wonderful. However, the biggest lesson is that despite how often I shuffle through O’Hare — a dank, crowded place that reminds me of Dallas-Fort Worth — United operates Concourse C at Terminal 1, which is beautiful, tall, light and airy. American Airlines hangs around Terminal 3, which is a much more depressing place.

Bat in the Bedroom

The morning after Memorial Day, I was awoken by the sound of my feline overlords chasing a bat in my bedroom. I caught the bat safely. I then deduced that neither I nor the kitties had been bitten or scratched by the little winged devil. So I carefully released the bat back into the wild.

Good idea, right?

Well, later that week, a co-worker came across a story on NPR about bats in the bedroom. And thus began a Seinfeldian journey of ridiculousness. For starters, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people seek post-exposure treatment for rabies if they awake to a bat in their bedroom, even if they’re confident they weren’t bitten. Accordingly, I use the MyHealth app to leave a “non-emergency medical question” with my physician. His medical assistant calls me and basically says: “We don’t know nuthin’ ‘but no bats; you better call the health department.” So I did. And the public-health nurse on the other end of the line — besides having a delightfully morbid sense of humor — suggested that there wasn’t any real risk and that Canada has abandoned the CDC’s strict rules because the CDC’s recommendations followed from a decade-long observation period with a total N count of five infected humans. Then she said the only two bats in Kent County that tested positive for rabies so far this year are both from my street, so maybe I should consider it anyway. Which … well, my street is very long. So then there’s the “do I go to the E.R. for shots, or not?” question, which boils down to this: Do you spend a ton of money to go to the ER for injections, knowing that you have an infinitesimally small risk of acquiring a virus that’s effectively 100 percent fatal, or not?

It’s the Precautionary Principle run amok, and an excellent case study in why we have so much waste in the health care industry.

And then, of course, the “what about the kitties?” question.

I figure I’ll take the cats to the vet this coming week, but I’m not going to get poked, myself. So if you see me frothing at the mouth later this summer — you’ll know I chose poorly. And that you should stay out of biting range.

Miscellaneous Morsels of Misanthropy

  • Although I’ll keep the victims (and their loved ones) of the Orlando shooting in my thoughts and prayers, I’m disappointed — but not surprised — that the immediate reaction circled around gun control. In Kalamazoo earlier this week, a crazy man plowed into a group of cyclists with his truck, killing five, but no one’s calling for a ban on automobiles. As long as we’re polarized about firearms, we’re going to continue to miss the point about the triggers of social decay that make mass-violence episodes occur in the first place. And more will die as a result. This is, foremost, a cultural problem, which requires solutions that transcend legislation.
  • Our writer’s meeting went well on Friday. We’re going to Ann Arbor next weekend to sell books at the Ann Arbor Book Festival. I’m excited.
  • I nearly forgot to mention — a few weeks ago, my friend Jared stopped into town for a visit. He used to live/work here, but he and his wife took up employment in Abu Dhabi. It was nice to connect. I’m going to interview him, and a few others, for the next issue of The 3288 Review. And I’m probably going to take him up on his offer to visit him in the Middle East.
  • Speaking of The 3288 Review — it’s on sale. Buy now, before we sell out! Copies arrived this past Wednesday. It’s a lovely volume. As usual, my column appears in the back; this time, I wrote about the literary representation of rape.

Healthcare Quality & Analytics, Personal

Updates: Annapolis, Bats & More!

No Comments

Where to begin?
Maryland Association for Healthcare Quality
I flew to Annapolis on Wednesday to speak at one of the semi-annual educational conferences of the Maryland Association for Healthcare Quality. I’ve known the MAHQ president, Monica, for several years; in fact, she keynoted the Michigan Association for Healthcare Quality conference I hosted in Traverse City two years ago. Lovely lady.
The MAHQ event lasted one full day. My colleague Gayle ran the morning session — about advanced Excel tips and an introduction to some intermediate-level statistical concepts — and I led the three-hour afternoon block. My session focused on the “why” of health data analytics; I presented a list of characteristics of a high-performing team, then I presented real-life use cases illuminating the value of each characteristic.
I also presented what’s increasingly my personal call-to-action about health data analytics:

Health care is in a value crisis precipitated by suboptimal structures and misaligned incentives. We’ve mostly eaten the low-hanging fruit from IOM/IHI. The sole remaining path for driving improvements in cost/outcomes/access/satisfaction rests in data-driven PI initiatives. Yet, our industry’s capability is still in its infancy. Until we get smart about data, costs will go up — and we’ll continue to inflict avoidable harm or even death on the patients we serve.

On a personal note, it was lovely to have dinner with Gayle and Stephanie at the Severn Inn on Wednesday. Our table overlooked the Severn River, immediately across the water from the United States Naval Academy. The cover photo for this post, in fact, was taken from the Inn’s parking lot. And on Thursday, Monica took me to the Fleet Reserve Club, where she’s a member, to enjoy drinks and to see the sights along the Ego Alley (Spa River) waterfront. A lovely experience.
This trip also marked my first time flying United Airlines. Good experience. The planes were in clean condition. The flight attendant on the ORD-to-BWI leg was wonderful. However, the biggest lesson is that despite how often I shuffle through O’Hare — a dank, crowded place that reminds me of Dallas-Fort Worth — United operates Concourse C at Terminal 1, which is beautiful, tall, light and airy. American Airlines hangs around Terminal 3, which is a much more depressing place.
Bat in the Bedroom
The morning after Memorial Day, I was awoken by the sound of my feline overlords chasing a bat in my bedroom. I caught the bat safely. I then deduced that neither I nor the kitties had been bitten or scratched by the little winged devil. So I carefully released the bat back into the wild.
Good idea, right?
Well, later that week, a co-worker came across a story on NPR about bats in the bedroom. And thus began a Seinfeldian journey of ridiculousness. For starters, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people seek post-exposure treatment for rabies if they awake to a bat in their bedroom, even if they’re confident they weren’t bitten. Accordingly, I use the MyHealth app to leave a “non-emergency medical question” with my physician. His medical assistant calls me and basically says: “We don’t know nuthin’ ‘but no bats; you better call the health department.” So I did. And the public-health nurse on the other end of the line — besides having a delightfully morbid sense of humor — suggested that there wasn’t any real risk and that Canada has abandoned the CDC’s strict rules because the CDC’s recommendations followed from a decade-long observation period with a total N count of five infected humans. Then she said the only two bats in Kent County that tested positive for rabies so far this year are both from my street, so maybe I should consider it anyway. Which … well, my street is very long. So then there’s the “do I go to the E.R. for shots, or not?” question, which boils down to this: Do you spend a ton of money to go to the ER for injections, knowing that you have an infinitesimally small risk of acquiring a virus that’s effectively 100 percent fatal, or not?
It’s the Precautionary Principle run amok, and an excellent case study in why we have so much waste in the health care industry.
And then, of course, the “what about the kitties?” question.
I figure I’ll take the cats to the vet this coming week, but I’m not going to get poked, myself. So if you see me frothing at the mouth later this summer — you’ll know I chose poorly. And that you should stay out of biting range.
Miscellaneous Morsels of Misanthropy

  • Although I’ll keep the victims (and their loved ones) of the Orlando shooting in my thoughts and prayers, I’m disappointed — but not surprised — that the immediate reaction circled around gun control. In Kalamazoo earlier this week, a crazy man plowed into a group of cyclists with his truck, killing five, but no one’s calling for a ban on automobiles. As long as we’re polarized about firearms, we’re going to continue to miss the point about the triggers of social decay that make mass-violence episodes occur in the first place. And more will die as a result. This is, foremost, a cultural problem, which requires solutions that transcend legislation.
  • Our writer’s meeting went well on Friday. We’re going to Ann Arbor next weekend to sell books at the Ann Arbor Book Festival. I’m excited.
  • I nearly forgot to mention — a few weeks ago, my friend Jared stopped into town for a visit. He used to live/work here, but he and his wife took up employment in Abu Dhabi. It was nice to connect. I’m going to interview him, and a few others, for the next issue of The 3288 Review. And I’m probably going to take him up on his offer to visit him in the Middle East.
  • Speaking of The 3288 Review — it’s on sale. Buy now, before we sell out! Copies arrived this past Wednesday. It’s a lovely volume. As usual, my column appears in the back; this time, I wrote about the literary representation of rape.

Personal

Observations

No Comments

With forlorn heaviness, my eyes absorb the tranquility of Plaster Creek as I sip my coffee and lament the untimely passing of a five-day holiday weekend. On the bright side, though — I have stuff to share.

In no particular order:

  • I’ve pretty much finished the consolidation of my social/Web platform. When I started Gillikin Consulting nearly a decade ago, I split my personal and professional social media and Web into separate properties. I’m now healing the divide. This blog has everything, as does my Twitter account and my still-mostly-dormant Google Plus page. I’m putting professional stuff on LinkedIn and my Facebook fan page; personal stuff will go to my normal Facebook page for the usual friends-only audience. And although I have a buttload of email accounts that all go to the same place, I’m streaming them into this domain. In fact, “jegillikin” is pretty much my handle everywhere, now. Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, blah, blah ….
  • My experiment in self-publishing has been realllly interesting. About three weeks ago, I uploaded a novella (roughly 23k-ish words) to Amazon. This project, which I started in February, was designed to validate a specific hypothesis that I encountered while reading Jane Friedman’s Publishing 101 — basically, that genre trumps platform in terms of sales generation. So after doing some careful research, I picked a niche genre of erotica, I wrote the novella, then I uploaded it. (Of course, I used a pseudonym; the story can’t be tracked back to me.) The results so far have been intriguing. I’ve managed to sell 16 copies of the Amazon e-book with literally no promotional activities and with a totally made-up author name that has no built-in readership. In addition, through the Kindle Direct Publishing program, I’ve made the novella free to read for Amazon Unlimited subscribers. I see that as of this morning, I’ve had 4,962 normalized page reads. Given that the novella clocks in at 128 normalized pages, I’ve had the equivalent of 38.77 additional readers. My royalties payable so far are $22.67 + £3.54 + €1.72. It’s difficult to infer the compensation off the Kindle Unlimited program — Amazon puts X dollars into a monthly pool, then it’s divided by total page reads, which becomes your multiplier — but if the rates today are similar to what I’ve seen published about a year ago, then on top of sales royalties I should see between $25 and $30 additional in KU revenue. Not bad, really. And it puts into perspective the amount of time and effort we’re putting into promoting literary fiction and poetry, at Caffeinated Press. I am toying with the idea of expanding the experiment by writing five more, similar novellas — but then creating a social platform de novo for the author pseudonym and seeing if it makes a material difference. And after that, collecting all six novellas into a Createspace print volume. The chance for passive residual income, even if it’s just a couple hundred bucks per month over the long run, is too tempting to pass up.
  • This past week, Scott, Richard, Tony and I met for a cigar night at Grand River Cigar. Tony had to get home early, but the rest of us went back to Scott’s condo at Riverhouse. He has a to-die-for view, as evidenced by a brief video of the evening G.R. skyline I shot from his balcony:
  • Speaking of Tony, he and I were able to knock through a whopping six back-to-back-to-back episodes of Vice Lounge Online last week. Talk about a marathon! At one point we took a cigar break on my front porch. Then we noticed the ginormous swarm of bees in the tree line on the other side of the street. See this video? Those little dots aren’t pixilation.
  • Whilst cleaning out the living-room closet yesterday, I discovered I have a Snuggie. Huh.
  • The feline overlords have been mostly content to let me write in peace from the living room, instead of demanding to sit on my arms or chest every time they see me approach a keyboard. It helps that they have soft places to rest:
    IMG_0021

OK, all for now. Chores await.

Personal, Writing, Editing & Journalism

Some Spring Housekeeping

No Comments

The last few months have been more hectic than most. Of note:

  • Our HEDIS medical-record review with our new processes and new vendor is winding to a halt. It’s been a lot of work, capturing roughly 17k medical records in six weeks. But preliminary rates look OK. So that’s a relief. We’ve been on a multi-million dollar journey to swap vendors for nearly 10 months now. With the end of our first-year effort now approaching, it’s time to reflect on lessons learned and to soak in the fact that I was a core leader in such a huge and politically high-profile project.
  • Two weeks ago, I spent two nights in Chicago doing NAHQ commission coordination. Interesting stuff. The association is really firing on all cylinders for it’s five-year strategic plan; now the goal is to keep everyone pointing in the same direction without stepping on toes. Details are TBD, but I may well be presenting in conferences in June in Toronto and near Baltimore.
  • And speaking of NAHQ, I’ll be in Dallas in the coming week for the Summit and for board meetings. Back to back to back to back to back …
  • I submitted a novella to Amazon. It’s an experiment; the novella is in a fringe sub-genre of erotica and it’s written under a pseudonym, using a name with no social platform and no author history. In the last eight hours, I’ve already sold three copies of the ebook and have earned $2.03 in royalties. Interesting. The whole exercise follows from a thought experiment in Jane Friedman’s excellent Publishing 101. (And no, I’m not going to tell you the pseudonym or the novella title. Like I said: fringe.)
  • My friend Brittany and her husband Steve welcomed a baby girl into their family on Thursday. She’s adorable. I went to the hospital to see mom, dad and baby.
  • Life at Caffeinated Press has had its ups and downs of late. Powering through the “painful growth phase,” I guess.

 

Personal, Vices

Trip Report – Louisville for #VLO5

1 Comment

Somewhat arbitrarily, Tony and I decided that the five-year anniversary of our podcast, The Vice Lounge Online, fell in April 2016. We started regularly podcasting (i.e., a weekly 30-minute show) in April 2011, but we had been recording intermittently since August 2010. For a while, in those earliest days, we released a show every three weeks or so, but after 4/2011, we went weekly and never looked back.

In January, Tony had the bright idea of doing some sort of group event. Other podcasts do it — there’s the Vegas Internet Mafia Family Picnic every autumn in Las Vegas, and 360Vegas does a springtime 360Vegas Vacation. Those events are, as they say, hella fun. So we scheduled a weekend in Louisville, KY to get the best of all worlds — a bit of casino gaming, a bit of premium cigars and a bit of fine adult beverages.

I don’t know if Tony and I will do something like this regularly, or if maybe we’ll do something in partnership with other groups (lookin’ at you, Denton Dallas and Beyond). But what I do know is that we had a ton of fun this year in Louisville and we’re extremely grateful to all the folks who turned out:

  • Roux, Edwin, Sparkles and Ryan from Texas
  • Alastair from the U.K.
  • Ryan and Becky from California
  • Andrew from Indiana
  • Bogan from South Carolina
  • Mark from Tennessee
  • Jason, Tony, Jen and Jeff from Michigan

My trip diary follows.

Thursday, March 31

I didn’t leave Grand Rapids until 4 p.m. — I left the office later than I hoped and I also desperately needed to stop for an oil change. For the most part, the drive was fine. OnStar routed me somewhat oddly, sending me all the way to Lansing on I-96E to catch I-69S to Indianapolis then I-65E to Louisville. By the time I hit Indy, torrential rains with lightning had swept into the area. At times, traffic slowed to less than 50 mph and I had to use the fast setting on my wipers. I half-expected to be pelted with frogs and locusts at some point.

By 11 p.m., I arrived in Elizabeth, IN at the Horseshoe Southern Indiana casino. I’ve been at HSI before; this “”riverboat”” on the Ohio River was my first major destination casino trip with Tony. My first time out, I hit a royal flush at video poker. This time, I managed to lose only $60. Not bad, all things considered. I think we were engaging in not-quite-subdued revelry until around 2 a.m., mostly just ambling around the casino. At one point, we (me, Tony, Alastair, Jeff, Mark and Andrew) settled around a $5 blackjack table for a while. I bought in for just $40 but managed to last long enough that the pit boss wrote each of us a comp for the casino cafe — my first ever table-game comp slip!

Friday, April 1

We left HSI and decamped directly for the Maker’s Mark Distillery in Loretto, KY. The incursion into central Kentucky lasted a full 90 minutes — lots of driving on this trip. We took the hour-long tour, seeing such things as the vats of fermenting mash, one of the barrel houses and the tasting room. We got to sample some stuff, and I ended up buying a bottle of Maker’s 46 Cask Strength, which you can only buy at the distillery at present. (It’s not on the open market.)

On the way from Loretto to Louisville, we stopped twice in Bardstown — once at the Willett Distillery (I bought the Willett Pot Still Reserve, a well-regarded bourbon), and again at Mammy’s Kitchen for a tasty Hot Brown. Bardstown looks like a lovely little town that would be worth spending the night at, just to take in the local sights.

When we sauntered into Louisville proper, I bee-lined it for Galt House. I checked in, then most of the party assembled at Jocky Silk’s Bourbon Bar (or, as Tony memorably put it, “”Silky Jocks””).

After a cocktail or two there — I sampled the Noah’s Mill, a small batch bourbon made at Willett — we ambled over to Doc Crow’s for dinner. The food was mostly good (I had a beef chili that was awesome, but my brisket sandwich was not well-prepared, according to Lord Roux of House Brisket) yet the service was horrible. Everything was slow and no one’s bill was 100-percent correct. Frustrating. In fact, the commentary throughout the trip was the slow and uneven quality of service at bars and restaurants in the downtown Louisville area.

Dinner having been consumed, we went to Down One Bourbon Bar, where service was also hideously slow. After a single cocktail, the group split up. I went with the Texas Delegation (sans Sparkles, who retired for the evening) to Bourbon Raw, a bourbon-bar-slash-restaurant on Fourth Street Live. (FSL is kind of like a mini version of the Fremont Street Experience in Las Vegas — a blocked-off stretch of road with music and a canopy.) Whilst at Bourbon Raw, we enjoyed lovely cigars; I’m grateful to the Texans for providing me with a Diesel Uncut. We had drinks and smoked under the canopy until 1 a.m.

Saturday, April 2

Wake up. Get showered. Run like a demon to get checked out an on the road, because we had an 11 a.m. tour at Woodford Reserve scheduled and the location was an hour away from Louisville. I wolfed down a McGriddle on the road.

The tour of Woodford Reserve, however, was quite nice. We had headphones and a shuttle bus. The highlights of the tour were similar to Maker’s Mark, although at WR, we got to see the copper stills (they’re the only U.S. bourbon producer doing triple-distilled whiskey in copper pot stills) and also the barrel run. The facility is old; parts of it date from the early 19th century. This tour was a bit more “”corporate”” than Maker’s Mark, but it was no less enjoyable for it. And the last five miles of the journey to the distillery snaked us through working stud farms. Foaling season!

After the tour we returned to Louisville. The group enjoyed a late brunch at Bourbon Raw — and despite the friendly-but-slow service, the “”chicken”” part of my “”chicken and waffles”” was the best-prepared poultry I think I’ve ever enjoyed. Paired it with a Manhattan as well as a dram of Hirsch bourbon.

I chatted with the Texans again, outside. They enjoyed cigars while I nursed my Hirsch. The breeze had picked up, though, and temps began to fall. After a while, I said goodbyes and at 4 p.m. on the nose, I drove away from Louisville, with just a single stop around Muncie for fuel.

Two things of note on the return drive: First, the wind was horrid and on I-69, just south of Ft. Wayne, a truck had blown over and blocked both southbound lanes, causing the northbound lanes to back up from all the rubbernecking. Then, we had pockets of snow. Wasn’t bad until I hit Coldwater, MI and experienced white-out conditions with visibility less than 200 feet in places. OnStar had routed me from I-69 to I-94 to US-131. The stretch of I-94 between I-69 and the eastern approaches of Kalamazoo were treacherous, with probably a dozen spin-outs and accidents in a 25-mile span of highway. I arrived home around 10:15 p.m. The cats were delighted.

Reflection

This was a fun trip. It’s really quite humbling to have made so many friends through podcasting that you can get 14 people from all across the northern hemisphere into a little town in the central U.S. for a vacation weekend. When I think about it, the fact that we have so many listeners (our show earns several thousand downloads per week from our server alone) and a vibrant social-media community on Twitter and Facebook is something remarkable.

And to get people to congregate in Louisville just for the heck of it? Wow.

We started VLO a half-decade ago on something of a whim. Tony had started listening to podcasts and became enamored with Five Hundy by Midnight. We figured we could try a podcast, too. And although it took a while for things to take off, we’re now reaping the rewards: Deeper knowledge of cigars, a more refined palate for premium spirits, comfort at knowing the right things to do at the casino. Our show isn’t going to resonate for everyone, but the fact that we have made so many friends through this podcast — well, again. Humbling.

Thanks to everyone who turned out in Louisville, and to the many others on social media who joined us in spirit. Your support and friendship mean the world to us.

Personal, Site Administration

Happy 10th Anniversary to “A Mild Voice of Reason”

No Comments

A decade ago this month, I re-launched my personal blog, migrating from the now-defunct ValueWeb to Site5.

Some stats:

  • 546 posts — or one every 6.7 days — with monthly post counts ranging between 1 and 20
  • 278 total comments
  • 58,189 spam comments — roughly 16 per day — have been defeated by Akismet (with 352 false negatives, a success rate of 99.4 percent)
  • 91 access intrusions averted in the last 7 days
  • Several hundred active visitors in any given month with 1.12 pages per session viewed
  • Between 50 and 100 RSS subscribers (it varies widely) at any given time

So. A decade as a blogger. Some takeaways:

  1. Blogging is a discipline, no different in its way than exercise: It can be painful at times, but when you get out of the habit, it’s hard to get back in. Yet when you stick with it, it gets easier — so you can stretch your technique and stamina over time.
  2. Sharing is a strategy, not a practice. It’s possible to over-share — in fact, a while back, I hid several old posts because they were too personal. And I’ve always had a policy of not fully naming private individuals, to protect their privacy from others’ Google-Fu.
  3. Blogging regularly is an important part of staying sharp as a writer.
  4. It’s often easier for me to write longer essays when I have coffee. But fiction stuff (which I don’t blog) is best accompanied by a martini.
  5. Cats thwart productivity.
  6. The leap from regular hobbyist blogger to professional blogger is not insubstantial. I’ve never found a reason to go hot-and-heavy into social or ad-supported blogging. Too much effort for a relatively minor payoff; the big successes in the blogging world come from lightning-in-a-bottle moments that are too hard to predict.

Thanks to all of you who read this blog. I hope you find it, at a minimum, interesting.

Here’s to the next decade.

Personal, Site Administration

Happy 10th Anniversary to "A Mild Voice of Reason"

No Comments

A decade ago this month, I re-launched my personal blog, migrating from the now-defunct ValueWeb to Site5.
Some stats:

  • 546 posts — or one every 6.7 days — with monthly post counts ranging between 1 and 20
  • 278 total comments
  • 58,189 spam comments — roughly 16 per day — have been defeated by Akismet (with 352 false negatives, a success rate of 99.4 percent)
  • 91 access intrusions averted in the last 7 days
  • Several hundred active visitors in any given month with 1.12 pages per session viewed
  • Between 50 and 100 RSS subscribers (it varies widely) at any given time

So. A decade as a blogger. Some takeaways:

  1. Blogging is a discipline, no different in its way than exercise: It can be painful at times, but when you get out of the habit, it’s hard to get back in. Yet when you stick with it, it gets easier — so you can stretch your technique and stamina over time.
  2. Sharing is a strategy, not a practice. It’s possible to over-share — in fact, a while back, I hid several old posts because they were too personal. And I’ve always had a policy of not fully naming private individuals, to protect their privacy from others’ Google-Fu.
  3. Blogging regularly is an important part of staying sharp as a writer.
  4. It’s often easier for me to write longer essays when I have coffee. But fiction stuff (which I don’t blog) is best accompanied by a martini.
  5. Cats thwart productivity.
  6. The leap from regular hobbyist blogger to professional blogger is not insubstantial. I’ve never found a reason to go hot-and-heavy into social or ad-supported blogging. Too much effort for a relatively minor payoff; the big successes in the blogging world come from lightning-in-a-bottle moments that are too hard to predict.

Thanks to all of you who read this blog. I hope you find it, at a minimum, interesting.
Here’s to the next decade.

Personal

Onward, 2016, to the Year of Refusal!

No Comments

Grand Staycation V is entering its final days. I return to the office on Jan. 4.

I’ll admit to looking forward to 2016 with a sense of expectation. Caffeinated Press has taken off by leaps and bounds. I’m soon to join the board of directors of the National Association for Healthcare Quality and am excited to help tackle the organization’s aggressive strategic plan. I’m in a good place right now.

Over 2015, some significant things happened —

  • We wrapped up work in January on the Health Data Analytics competency framework within NAHQ. Even managed to be profiled as a national expert on the subject.
  • Caffeinated Press launched several products — including Brewed Awakenings, A Broken Race and A Crowd of Sorrows as well as The 3288 Review literary journal — and leased commercial office space in July. Hard to believe we’re already listed in P&W and Duotrope and are kicking the 100-submission mark for the third quarterly issue of the journal.
  • Managed to attend a musical, an opera and a symphony performance over the course of the year, as well as to add a couple of new entries to my diving log.
  • Went to the National Quality Summit in Philadelphia in April and presented at the RL Solutions conference in New Orleans in May.
  • I bought a 2013 Chevy Cruze over the summer.
  • I managed to get my department at Priority Health fully staffed and firing on all cylinders.
  • The 2015 annual educational conference of the Michigan Association for Healthcare Quality — which I chaired — enjoyed more than 60 attendees over the two-day event at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel.
  • The VLO podcast crossed the 250-episode mark in November. And Tony has been editing for several months now, to great effect!
  • For the third consecutive year, I “won” National Novel Writing Month. A day early, to boot.
  • In September, for all practical purposes, Demand Media froze most of its editorial operations. I’m still on “the list” and I do occasionally get small-project pitches, but the days of DMS being a consistent source of supplementary revenue have evaporated — a situation with both upside and downside potential for me in the long run.
  • I ended the year at the same weight at which I started it. Which, while not great, is at least consistent with the fact that I ended 2014 at the same weight as I began it.
  • Baby Emma was born in September to my second-eldest cousin and her fiancé.

So it was a good year. I’m happy with the outcome. I didn’t get all my goals accomplished, but other goals I knocked out of the park, and some of my biggest wins I could not have envisioned on 1/1/15.

I’ve had one real major life lesson, though, that will guide how I approach 2016.

Let’s begin with some context. The first half of last year was busy; a consistent low-grade buzz of stuff to do kept me hopping. Over the summer, the pace intensified. We had a ton of CafPress work, plus extra time at the day job, plus conference planning for MAHQ, plus, plus, plus. It got to the point where I fell more than 1,500 emails behind and was running two to four weeks, on average, just to respond to non-urgent messages. And then people yell: Authors who want their books published, MAHQ colleagues with questions about conference planning, folks at the office who want their projects prioritized, people who cannot grasp that just because they have free time doesn’t mean that I do as well, etc.

I spent a lot of time apologizing and a lot of time stressing; that anxiety took a bigger toll physically and emotionally than I care to detail. Then, in November, as a counterpoint to some of the “processing” I wrote about in October, I had an epiphany: I am not beholden to other people’s proprietary expectations about what I should do, when I should do it or how it ought to be done. I am a capable, competent adult who knows how to set priorities and get things accomplished. With the exception of work-related subjects relative to my day-job boss, I don’t need to explain or defend my choices or my problem-solving approaches to anyone. Of course, this epiphany isn’t exactly rocket science; most of you beautiful readers will nod your heads and say, “Well, duh.” The thing is, for me in November, that knowledge moved from being an abstract concept to an internalized reality — it migrated from the head to the heart.

My thinking now is that I do the best that I can with the time and talents allotted to me, and if people don’t like it, such disappointment is solely their own to bear. I have better things to occupy my mental focus!

I refuse to be bullied into getting things done in half-assed fashion just because someone acts like the squeaky wheel and needs it now-now-now. I refuse to be bullied into responding to falsely urgent fire drills at the expense of stuff that’s genuinely important. I refuse to be bullied into responding to something before I’m ready on account of snarky comments about how difficult it can be to reach me at the commenter’s own convenience. I refuse to be bullied by people who throw temper tantrums just to get attention or to coerce some due date that meets their needs but doesn’t make sense in light of my entire workload. I refuse to be bullied into apologizing to people because I’m not Burger King and they didn’t get it their way.

I refuse to be bullied.

I fucking refuse.

And in such refusal, as if by magic, I feel better about the world. When your mental focus pivots to doing the right thing and doing it well, instead of making people happy, you’ll end up achieving more and incurring the respect of others. (Well, maybe not the jackwagons, but no one cares about their opinion anyway.)

I sometimes wonder why so many people believe they’re entitled to set expectations about how others should live their lives. Much of the angst that I’ve experienced over the years flowed from the self-inflicted injury of trying to meet other people’s expectations, without seriously evaluating whether those expectations were even legitimate.

But not anymore.

Like I said: I’m looking forward to 2016 — and to a lower-stress year.

Personal

A “Merry Christmas” Reflection

No Comments

Today is the day that enchants the minds of children and provokes a curious admixture of joy, sorrow, angst and consumerism for adults. Yes, today is Christmas. May yours be merry.

Some thoughts:

  • When I was a kid, Christmas was a time of magic. Part of the magic was a two-fold sense of expectancy — the secular acts of gift-giving, feasting and school vacations, on one hand, and the progression of Advent on the other. Now, I look forward to my annual two-week vacation, but the religious aspect feels disconnected. Partly, I think, because of my church-hopping over the last several years, and partly because most of the expressions I see of authentically Catholic Advent/Christmas observance feel increasingly trite. The depth is missing. The sense of spiritual challenge is gone. Many years ago, my friend Mitch observed that one of our priests only really had five homilies, the contents of which changed like a paint-by-numbers game. Advent/Christmas feels a lot like that, now: Pick a generic theme as your base color and paint over last year’s season. We’re depriving ourselves of something important, I think, and it doesn’t feel like it’s a one-priest or one-parish thing.
  • With temperatures fluctuating between the mid-50s and mid-60s over the last few days, it hardly feels like Christmas. Apparently this is West Michigan’s 12th “green” Christmas since 1905; usually, we have at least an inch or two of snow cover. So the fact that I could sit outside on the front porch on the 23rd or 26th, in shorts and a T-shirt, to enjoy a cigar — well, that situation is a wee bit out of the ordinary. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.
  • Gift-giving, for me, is a stressor. There’s the embarrassment of forgetting, the awkwardness of one-way exchanges, the frustration of thinking of just the right gift, etc. But it is what it is, I suppose.
  • Recent holiday events have been pleasant. We did Christmas Eve with my mom. Among other things, I got cat toys, and Murphy even played with one at some length: A bird that, when batted, makes a chirping sound. I heard chips all night. #YayFun. And last Saturday, we visited my grandmother for the maternal-family party. Got to meet baby Emma for the first time.
  • Speaking of my mom’s party, three things of note transpired. First, Katie showed up, which was nice. Second, there was a serious discussion about a family trip four years from now — a three-week summer trek by rented RV to Alaska. And third, my brother trumped in the annual game of “rearrange mom’s ‘Merry Christmas’ blocks” … xmas
  • I welcomed Tony back last Sunday for a podcasting session. That was nice. And in the last few weeks, I’ve had dinner with Abbi — she just got back from three weeks in northern India and brought me back a lovely hand-woven cashmere scarf — and cigars with my old college friends Matt and John. I haven’t seen John in many years, so it was an especially joyful experience to re-connect with him.
  • I’m in the middle of a two-week vacation. Lots of stuff to accomplish, but progress is already solid. I’m remembering, however, the biggest reason I wanted an office for Caffeinated Press: Cats. Specifically, that Murphy either wants to sleep on me, or walk around the house yelling loudly to get my attention. I’ve never seen a cat as quite as co-dependent as he is. Fiona, his sister, hasn’t moved from her pillow in the sun over the last four hours. Murphy, however, has been a very loud, very fuzzy shadow all day long. Makes it hard to work in peace.
  • I’m keeping friends who’ve had relationship damage over the last year in my thoughts as they experience the holidays in a less happy light.

Merry Christmas and happy Hannukah, and may you have a safe/happy/healthy/profitable new year.

1 … 4 5 6 7 8 … 42