MediocreMan

Is It Really Inventory? · 28 June 2025

Have you ever had a bunch of blog posts ready, but you cannot post them yet for one reason or another? Yeah. Me neither.

Okay. I have. I am in that situation right now. I have a couple blog posts ready to put out there, but due to other constraints, I cannot post them yet. One is about a book that I have written but that I am waiting for material for the back cover. One has references to my other website, which is currently broken. Which could actually be a blog post in and of itself. (Hmm. Note to self. Maybe write a blog post about broken websites. If I have not already done so.)

At any rate, I have an inventory of blog posts, but due to other circumstances, I cannot post them yet. Argh.

(Speaking of Argh. It is a great word. I do not even think it needs to be capitalized for the spell checker to say it is okay. Maybe I should try it. argh. Yep. It must be a real word. The only thing my word processor tried to do was capitalize it. Which is a good thing.)

Now where was I? Oh yes. Argh. No wait. Inventory.

It is strange to think of having an inventory of blog posts. But I do. I am sure that other bloggers do too. Think about it. If you are writing and posting a blog post once a week, you probably need to write more than once a week. Depending on your topic. And if you are like me and have no real subject to bind all your posts together, you can just write whatever and post whenever. Unless you are going to post about a holiday or special event. Then, you probably ought to plan way ahead and write the piece well before you post it. Which is, of course, what I do.

Right.

I suppose that I should stop lying in this blog post. I have done it a couple times. The introductory paragraph and two paragraphs above this one have lies. And I do not like to lie. So maybe they are just hyperbole or exaggerations or irony. (Another set of lies? Hmm.)

At any rate.

I like the notion of having an inventory of blog posts. I have had that situation a time or two. And I have such a situation now, except this time I am not ahead of the game, I am behind the eight ball. At least with one post. I need to fix my website (argh) and then I can post that particular blog. And the other one has a specific date. The day before or after I release my book.

So I guess the question is really whether I have an inventory or not. I suppose that since I cannot just post those blog posts any time, they are not really inventory. I cannot just pull them off the shelf and throw them out there. Which is okay. I can get blog posts done one each week and continue to meet my self-imposed deadline.

I suppose that I did not accomplish anything with this post. Not that I ever do. But perhaps the writers out there would agree. If my finished blog posts are constrained by other factors, they are not really inventory. (I suppose I knew that even as I wrote the title. Hmm.)

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Adult Pacifiers · 21 June 2025

I doubt that I am the first to think about it, but phones seem to be adult (and teen) pacifiers.

We did not give our children pacifiers when they were young. I am not exactly sure why, but it was something we were firmly against. Part of it was probably because we did not grow up with them. At least not too much. Every baby did not have them when I was a baby. Or at least that is what I tell myself. I do remember seeing kids (including my younger siblings) holding bottles with their hands and feet and sucking them dry. And even beyond dry. They kept sucking on the bottle until long after there was no more formula. Maybe that was where the idea for pacifiers came from in the first place. Hmm.

At any rate.

Fast forward fifty years and I see pacifiers all around me. But I am not around infants. I see teens and adults walking around with their eyes glued to their phones. They do not even look where they are going. They just keep staring at their phones. They might be bored. They might be tired. They might just be living life. But they are glued to their phones. Just like babies sucking on their pacifiers.

Which is an interesting word. Pacifiers. We give those pacifiers to toddlers because we want to pacify them. We do not want them crying when they are supposed to be quiet. But if they are hungry, they will just spit those things out and cry until they get the food they want. Or at least that is the theory. I think. I am not sure since we did not use them on our kids. We fed them when they needed to be fed and we let them play video games when they were bored.

Maybe you had to read that last line twice. Yes. I made a poor parenting decision. I let our toddlers play video games when they were bored.

I must confess that I am guilty of giving a hand-held video game to my two-year old son. I said it was his, and it was when he had it, but I am the one who wanted to play Pokémon. Sure, I was playing it with his older brother (who was seven, by the way), but I still gave him, the toddler, the electronic pacifier.

At any rate.

I have this strange picture in my mind of teens and adults walking around with pacifiers in their mouths. It is odd, but it is probably fitting. After all, is that not what we are doing when we walk around with our phones and ignore the world around us? Are we not pacifying ourselves? Giving ourselves soothing stimulation when we are tired, hungry, bored? It makes you think. Or at least it makes me think.

I am not sure that anybody thinks of phones as adult and teen pacifiers, but it might be an apt metaphor. For like the pacifiers that we use for babies and toddlers, adult pacifiers are there to take our minds off the things that we really want to think about. For whether they are for babies or teens or adults, all pacifiers just keep us occupied. Just keep us pacified.

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Exhaustion and Exhilaration · 14 June 2025

Exhaustion and exhilaration are not mutually exclusive, especially when you are doing something you love.

We recently finished the 2025 Track and Field (T&F) season, and what a season it was. We finished second in our classification in our state! For the second year in a row! It was quite exhilarating, to say the least.

And it was exhausting. Quite the slog. Which means that there is a bit of relief that it is over. And yet… And yet I can hardly wait until it all starts again in nine or so months.

I know that sounds strange, but it really is not. One of my fellow coaches and I were talking about it. Michael said, “It is exhausting and exhilarating at the same time. And nobody gets that but other coaches.” He was driving us home from a meet, but I think I still just nodded. I was too exhausted to say anything.

(By the way, I was not talking to myself. In fact, if you meet a man of a certain age, you can guess that his name is Michael and you will be right about 50% of the time. Okay, that is a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. Try it and see. Next time you meet a man over about 40 years old, guess that his name is Michael. You have a good chance of being right. But that is another story.)

At any rate.

There are probably other people besides coaches who understand the notion that exhilaration and exhaustion are not mutually exclusive. Athletes for one. They can be exhausted at the end of a meet, but be exhilarated because they won or because they got a personal record or just because they have so much endorphins flowing through their bodies.

I think that people who love their jobs can feel it too. They understand that even though they are going home exhausted, they accomplished something great. So they are exhilarated and ready to get after it again the next day.

In my own case, I love my job as a teacher and coach. I am not necessarily exhilarated at the end of each day, but I am at the end of each season and the end of each year. I am exhilarated because I know that some of my students and athletes accomplished something that they may not have thought they could. Somebody in the classroom or on the track or on the field did something amazing. I am exhilarated because each of them is exhilarated. And that exhilaration gives me energy to start it all over again next year and next season. Even though the effort to get there was exhausting.

We all know that to accomplish anything worthwhile, we need to put in the effort. We need to invest our energy and ourselves into the great endeavor. We need to pour ourselves into what we are doing. And in the case of teachers and coaches, that means that we need to pour ourselves into our students and athletes. Which is exhausting. The mental and emotional energy stresses and strains our beings even though the rewards are exhilarating.

I know that not everything I do is both exhilarating and exhausting, but the endeavors that are are worth it. Teaching and coaching and even writing exhaust me, but they exhilarate me as well. Which is why I keep coming back. It is why I keep working with students and athletes. It is why I keep writing. I feel the exhaustion to the very depths of my soul, but I just recharge and get ready to come back for more. For I know that with the exhaustion comes exhilaration.

I hope that everybody has some endeavor that takes all of their energy and gives them exhilaration. I hope that everybody can someday understand that exhaustion and exhilaration are not mutually exclusive.

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