I only got two posts up yesterday. That’s not acceptable, and I’m sorry. Ethics Alarms has a goal of registering four posts a day, come rain or shine, because even that level—it’s typically about 3,500 or more words a day, counting typos—doesn’t keep up. I don’t feel too badly when I can only manage three. Yesterday was a terrible day, beginning with the ordeal of having to deal with liars, incompetents and SOBs along with malicious technology as I tried to get an overdue waste water treatment bill handled. By the time what should have been a 15 minute process was over, it was after noon, Spuds was annoyed (I almost wrote “ticked” which has other meanings when a dog is the subject) and I was so furious and frustrated that I could hardly function.
Then I let myself get talked into applying for the currently vacant Washington Post theater reviewer post. It was another cyber-application, and after two more hours of frustration and screaming at the sky like the Highwayman in the poem, I gave up. It’s a job that I am as qualified for as anyone could be, I could use the extra income, and it would be fun, but the application convinced me that:
- ….I really don’t want to work with these people, and the culture at the Post would either drive me nuts or require me to quit.
- ….it’s DEI all the way down. I considered refusing to answer all the questions about color, ethnicity, gender etc, but that would be pointless. I would bet what little money I have right now that the Post’s main reviewer will be “of color.” Not that this will be because experience, skills and merit won’t be the primary factors in his, her or xe’s hiring, of course….
- I’m too old. Yes, I’m in as good health as I have ever been and my relatives tend to make it to 89 or better with fully functioning minds, but age discrimination is real, endemic to the workplace, and incurable. Except in our nation’s elected leadership, for some reason…
- I’ve really got to update my official photo. It’s affirmatively misleading: this dawned on me only recently when I discovered that walking Spuds constantly has caused me to lose almost 40 pounds without realizing it. As Kathleen Turner sagely observed, your choices as you exit early middle age is to be healthily thin but to see your age written on your face, or to have a nice smooth face on a fat body.
- The Post wanted all my social media urls as well as my websites. I’d like to think that the paper’s arts department wouldn’t care that I have declared the news and editorial staff biased, dishonest, incompetent and a blight on the nation in a hundred or more essays since 2009, but I’d be deceiving myself.
- The job would almost certainly require that I give up my ethics practice, ruined that it is. It’s a fact: if I had the luxury of getting paid well enough to survive doing nothing but theater, I’d have done it long ago. It has always been what I love most (well, that and baseball), and, I think, what I’m best at, though it’s close. I cast my lot with ethics, however, and never regretted the choice, because it is important, and not enough qualified people are in this battle.
The realization of all of this caused me to toss what had taken up more of my day, and to be even more disheartened that I was when I started. Then a good friend and well-wisher insisted that we go to dinner, and because he’s old, it was a six o’clock engagement (Grace and my workday typically ended around 8).
If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it well and up to my standards. A common response from me when I am confronting the manager of a service or establishment who has not treated me well and am told about illnesses, absences, breakdowns of equipment, etcetera, is, “Those are your problems. You have no right to make your problems my problems.” I believe in that, and try to live and work by it. Everyone, including many of you, have been generous and kind in sending me condolences, cards, phone calls and even gifts to get me through this difficult period. Nonetheless, I still have a mission and a job to do.
I promise to do it better.
Ethics Alarms 
❤️
ditto
I salute you for your high standards, but you are also human. Please give yourself a break for not meeting up to what you consider an acceptable work performance on a given day. We all have days where it seems the universe is conspiring against us.
Thank you for your outstanding material, day after day. Your writing has influenced me in many ways.
You do just fine—it’s not about quantity—it’s about quality—-and trust me you would not have enjoyed any time with that paper.
Be not perturbed, I too had a day battleing beurocrats at Express Scripts for over two hours. Express Scripts is the federally imposed prescriptions service that must be used by military retired. We are not allowed to use local (family run freindlyy pharmacists) more than twice for chronic medications. We must use ES of an active duty base pharmacy.
A number of events prove to me that some governmental associate has their hand in the pocket of ES.
First they send me a “see what you can save useing ES” propaganda. Their docuement showed that some of my medications would cost me $4.95 for a 90 day quantity at Mom and POP but $13.00 at ES. When I asked why can i not use MoM and POP the answer was ”you can but only twice, then you will have to pay the “full price so ES will save you money then”
One of my medication needs to be kept cool. Instead of allowing me to get it at MOM and POP so I can pop it in my regrigerator, ES sends it to me in a rather large styrofoam box with ice packs. I now have close to 50 nonreclylable styrofoam boxes in my garage. So much for saving the environement.
MY health care provider want me to use a CGM to betteer control my diabetes. It is proven by Medicare, the CDC, the FDA, and the ADA to be extremenl beneficial. ES refuses to provide me the product unless their is preapproved authorization. My provider has tried four time. Each time it is rejected by letter, noting their is a lackof documentaion. While on the phone I asked if they could provide me with a list of the docuements required so I can go over it with my healthcare provider. The answer was they cannot provide me, the patient, with such a list. My provider can. My provider does not have the list of docuements requried and she too cannot get a comprhensive list from ES. She was, in fact told to see “medicare manuel XXX, vol ii, paragraph nn”
those were my woes from yesterday, so be in better cheer!
Bloody hell, man. I’m retired, and I’ve posted twice on the same day maybe two or three times, ever. You post more every month than I ever have in a year. And you have continued to do that despite some particularly trying times. You’re not Atlas; no need to carry all that weight. Give yourself a break. Breathe.
I completely agree!!!!
Jack, you ARE what James Brown WAS to SHOW BUSINESS:
The Hardest Workin’ Man In Ethics!
PWS
Quality, which is always high, over quantity, sir.
I wrote these words back in 2020…
It should have been evident back in October 2020 when I wrote those words to promote the GoFundMe campaign to raise money for a new laptop compute for Jack that I’ve been thinking about this kind of thing for a while.
Jack, can you make your ProEthics, Ltd. PayPal account (jamproethics@verizon.net) accept monthly or yearly contributions in support of your mission at Ethics Alarms? Now that I’m on a retirement fixed income I can’t guarantee that it will be a lot of dollars but I’d like to donate something annually if you choose to accept it. If others choose to donate it could add up and make a difference in the larger scheme of things.
Here is the message I currently get when I try to send $$$ to the account…
Steve Witherspoon
I’d be in for something.
Lots of artists put a hat out for those who appreciate their work.
Tip jar.
Something.
Tip Jar, that’s a fabulous way to present it.
I’m all in favor of the tip jar, as well.
I’d be in for something. Lots of creators use Patreon for people to support their work. I’ve a client who is a legitimate ancient history / military history professor and writes a weekly blog — he makes a decent living via Patreon and other avenues.
I think your work is more important than most of the folks I already support.
Out of the box…
I was just thinking (I know it’s a scary), since you are already paying for a dot com domain name you should be entitled, as is usual by your hosting company (WordPress, BlueHost, etc), to at lest one free email addresses associated with hosting that domain name. So, how about starting a new email address and associate that one with PayPal or something equivalent to PayPal. Instead of using the email address jamproethics@verizon.net that is directly associated with ProEthics.com create a new one just for free will donations to support the mission of Ethics Alarms, it could be donations@ethicsalarms.com or missiondonations@ethicsalarms.com. You can use the same program you’re now using to access both emails.
Just a suggestion.
Everyone has times like that and getting only 2 posts in is hardly a disastrous consequence. I hope things improve soon. The Post position probably would have driven you nuts, given you lots of material for posts, or both.
Difficult times should hopefully make us thankful for the good ones. Hang in there, Jack.
What the hell is wrong with you? Take a break already.
You made m laugh with this. Thanks, Mrs. Q.
Jack,
Life is tough. Don’t make it harder on yourself than you have to. We all understand that it is hard to function with the loss of a loved one. I cannot imagine how I would function if I woke up one morning to find myself a widow. If you need a break, TAKE ONE.
Otherwise, I strongly suggest you take on the Patreon/Tip Jar suggestion of those above. My family supports several content creators, not because we get much tangible from them, but because we want to support their efforts and we gain intangibles. While I don’t think you would want (from what you have said in the past) to put your content behind a paywall, putting up a tip jar would help greatly. You could also do what many people do which is provide a certain amount of content for free and some extra stuff for cost. A content provider I enjoy provides most of his Catholic Apologetics for free, but charges for a small percentage of his content. Paying for his content allows us to request topics on certain occasions. He certainly is not required to answer every subscriber request, but he gets a lot of them in.
In this, I am trying to suggest ways to monetize the blog, at least a little, so that you can continue doing what you do so well here, while helping your bottom line, and not compromising your mission. I believe the tip jar option would probably be ideal, after all, no one is forced to tip and many of us would.
Please consider this. You put time and effort into this and many of us feel that it benefits us.
I’d be hard-pressed to generate one quality blog post a week, and more than happy to get one a day of yours, or even miss some days if it means your quality of life is improved. We certainly appreciate the dedication, but don’t over-stress yourself on anybody else’s account.
Maybe this would be more appropriate for the Open Friday Forum, but a topic in the comments changes the math.
Jack, I don’t know you personally and I don’t like hearing condolences or congratulations from people I don’t know. Got one from a charity I donate to when I can and it was creepy.
I ask what purpose the self-flagellation that is this blog entry serves. You’ve let us know, and I think lower-that-usual output is worthy of preemptive forgiveness from your readers.
The other thing, I have my groceries delivered by Safeway, for which I pay a fee. Yesterday, just before pressing the “Place Order” button, a new field had been unceremoniously included and pre-populated tip amount.
I get the same delivery person most of the time, so I entered a number. This morning, my groceries were delivered by DoorDash, who are mostly terrible. I have no idea if the driver saw any of the tip I paid, but the next order will have no tip.
Hang in there.