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“You know it’s always good to talk and keep in touch with people you care about but that value, hands down, doubles when you can reconnect and realize that they are having to dispense with the same, damn, daily bullshit you do. ”

-J. Keys

Going forward, sometimes, about the best you can do is hit a challenge head on and hold on tight. There are no nice parts, it’s just hard.  Its important, though, not to give up; on your options, the total realm of possibilities and the things that matter more than the circumstances. Its easy to declare war… it may even be necessary to fight one… but I’ve never been a part of one that wasn’t a mess or that didn’t have casualties. The former you can usually cleanup, the latter you just lose.  -J. Keys

Her Gravity
By J. Keys

There she is, laying on the ground, tragically drowning in half an inch of water filled with false hopes, anger and despair as she forces her lips against the surface as hard as she can trying to consume every last drop. Pity… if she would just turn over she could breath and see the sky.

She reaches out and tries to hold on to so many things that don’t do the same back. She wants and tries and then falls down and doesn’t understand why; doesn’t understand that saying goodbye is as much a part of the deal as getting back up and trying harder or simply trying again. She wants to know why and claims that life is just unfair, quoting words and philosophy that are either incredibly cliché or incredibly wrong. The irony is that she gets it… she doesn’t want to pay the price to have it all.

Her potential was once grand and perhaps it still could be if she would realize that her freedom from gravity has nothing to do with the weight on her shoulders or a perceived need to escape it… but that is has everything to do with pushing back on those who stop her and pushing up on that which keeps her down, away from the sky, tragically drowning in only half an inch of water.

“Forgetting” With the best intentions we treat this word and its concept like an eraser. I wonder if we ever do, forget that is, but either way the underlying truth is that a mark made is like a thing known –the impression shapes not only us but our world as well. In this regard, all actions and their outcomes are unavoidably indelible.

Regret is a silly thing but it does mitigate both our ridiculous pursuit of perfection as much our altruistic pursuit of spiritual harmony. Curious, but mysteriously appropriate, how this blade in our canon of life-weapons seems to cut so much deeper than the others –as it serves our doubts and provides swath against them too.

Though I believe in second chances there are no do-overs; “next time” is referred to as such for a reason. Additionally, “next time” is never plays out the same as the first time. As for control? You have control over your choices about in as much as making them (though not much more). But as the Sunscreen song says they’re also “half-chance, so are everybody else’s.”

Re: Allowing technology end-users to remain ignorant…
Posted: Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 12:37pm

I just think this kind of mentality is tantamount to endorsing personal irresponsibility.

I really don’t get it… I mean, we are expected to show up to work, do work, fill out forms, pay our bills, taxes, put oil and gas in our cars, buy food, do laundry, etc… but when it comes to computers, suddenly, the rules no longer apply. It blows my mind. I don’t expect anyone to be as smart or savvy as me in the technology field but I don’t think I ask any more due diligence from an end-user then they already employ in their own, daily lives.

It’s the year 2009 and people still walk around joking about how they’re “computer illiterate” –they might as well have the same attitude about being truly illiterate. These are modern-day survival skills but few people and, more importantly, leaders make any kind of discipline out of them (as they should). Yup, computer-stupid people do secure our jobs but it’s not as if they could survive, much less thrive, without us if they were even just a little bit more intelligent (or even just better trained).

And that is a critically missed point in the argument that smarter, more accountable users make for a much more efficient process and competitive edge –the more aware and involved a user is with any process, the more rapidly your specialized forces can move to make thing happen and make things better. The alternative is that all support mechanisms of the organization spend more time wiping behinds rather than innovating new methods to stay ahead and grow.

“If I were king…” -JK

It can often be difficult to know, in any tense, a passionate person. Their delight in challenge, both to themselves and others, can easily be misperceived as a threatening or argumentative gesture. But is in knowing others and knowing why that fuels their reasons and their ways. And it is within that passion that they draw out both the wicked and the willing… and are never unclear… about either. -J. Keys

A random philosophy on systematic culture and how it breaks…
By J.Keys

I can’t say I disagree with him on the “lead them to water” philosophy except to say that the prepared mind is always favored on the field of battle and that this very idea saves more time, money and churn when all of your troops share the same kind of concerns at a fundamental level (vs. corralling groups like cows or any one group claiming exemption for any reason; like claiming they are simply more important than another member for no, actual, founded reason).

A sense of urgency doesn’t require a dose of ignorance for the purity of necessary action to take place; nor does a lack of common sense absolve someone from the aforementioned need to know what the fundamentals of the objective are or that a sense of urgency is required both to keep from dying as much as it is to grow stronger. That is to say that what someone doesn’t know is not their worst enemy –it’s what they don’t know that they don’t know that will bring them down, first. Any measure of unwillingness to face that only makes matters intrinsically worse.

This is the essence behind the truth that being industriously knowledgeable absolutely makes you more efficient which means better decisions, less downtime, a sharper competitive edge which leads to more growth and more money. Keep or allow people to remain in the dark? Then you get just the opposite and an unbalanced weight on some part of your brigade that, eventually, won’t be able to keep up because, if for no other reason, it was decided that being systematic about all angles of approach was just too hard for everyone to grasp or maintain.”

The weight of it all
By J. Keys

You know what I want to do? It is all things without constraint; a hug, a look a word. But this life carries a weight both variable and constant. There are considerations that are true and perceptions that are so paper thin you could sneeze and dissolve them like sugar in water if not for their monumental reach and unsubstantiated galvanization unto themselves. Reality is indeed a woven fabric but the reality we live in is frail and weak.

And so the clandestine is born. It is a peculiar and most often misunderstood way. It is so many times seen as dark, obtuse and… unknown. But it is a razor thin line that exists within us all… that line between a deceit in kind and camouflage in purpose. Knowledge is a wonderful and powerful thing… but it cannot be undone, for better or for worse. Aside from these facts and fossils we color our world with the best of what we want and the worst of what we’ve ever been. It causes us to judge and yell and forgive and move on… again, we are strange creatures.

Nevertheless, all things considered, there is no harmony or excellence without a balance or dam. This world and so many entities within it have become so truly great… but never without shields, guards and secrets. This will always be the unsung and unappreciated sentinel of continuity that carries the weight for us all… both constant and variable.

I’ve known Patti for almost 14 year now and although I’ve never known her to be anything less than a razor sharp professional, it is the heart she puts into everything that underlies every single good thing that she is and does. So much of life can be war and I only go to war with those I can rely on and trust. Patti has always been there and I’ve always counted her there. That’s her style and way, all the way. – J. Keys (Me)

It is an almost invisibly thin line between pragmatism and faith, though most either disagree or don’t understand this. A cliche is often uttered that “it takes a thief to catch a thief”…but the truth of the matter is that life, action and survival takes knowing the extreme and opposite of anything to understand it, defeat it or to elevate beyond it. Good, bad, light, dark… sides of the same coin in which the point, divided by an almost invisibly thin line, is so often missed. – J. Keys (Me)

That smile
By J. Keys

I have to say, I do love to see her smile. You don’t even have to see it directly, really, you can even just catch it slightly from the side and it lights up the room and everyone around it. Hard to get enough of it, though…

When she’s gone, you notice. It’s never a topic of conversation but it’s there, in the back of your mind, like the name of someone famous you can’t remember but that sits on the tip of your tongue. It rests on your sleeve as the colder winds of the night rush over you while you wait for the sun to come back up again. Nevertheless, it’s all worth the wait.

Like the warmth from that thing we take for granted all the time, it’s hard to understand why she doesn’t already know… know that such a thing is needed, waited on and wanted. What does it take, I wonder, to convince a star that its core is the masterpiece of its life and not the bright light it produces? Perhaps if she could just get the word out, right? Either way she’s not as stuck as she thinks she is.

I know, it sounds crazy… but she gets it. Does anyone knock? Yeah, I bet they do. Does she hear it or is she just expecting the door to be knocked down? I don’t know. But aside from that or even getting to know, I have to say, I do love to see her smile.

“You know all we have in the end is hindsight. The problem is we never use enough foresight to begin with which is what makes looking back so bad. People start pointing fingers, ‘should have, would have, could have’ done this or that. But the greatest problem isn’t what we should have done or what even went wrong –it’s what we must do next without screwing up all over again.”

-J. Keys