two things I’m changing in my life right now

1. I am going to start watching movie previews, trailers, whatever you want to call them. For years I have avoided them because I feel they often just show the most exciting or outrageous parts of the film so when I go to actually watch the thing, it’s underwhelming because I just end up sitting through an hour and a half of preamble before re-watching a few moments that are cool but I’ve already seen. I still feel that way but on the other hand, over the last several years I have ended up sitting through too many piece of shit films that weren’t worth my time — if I had just watched even a few minutes of a preview, most of the time I would have realized the film was a piece of crap before committing to it. It happened again last night with a film called Deadgirl which I had seen on some ‘most disturbing films’ lists. Almost as soon as the thing started, I realized it was junk. I’ve gotten better at giving up earlier on these things so within 5 minutes I started skipping through it and confirmed my suspicions, and also confirmed it wasn’t even remotely shocking. I’m happy I didn’t waste much time on it but I’d rather have wasted even less time. So now I’m going to watch previews of every film on my ‘to watch’ list and probably remove about half of them from the list.
2. At age 42, I’m finally going to start dusting the house on a regular basis. I always hated dusting, and it’s the primary reason we hired a housekeeper several years ago. But they usually did shit jobs, charged way too much for it, and were notoriously unreliable so we recently gave up on the housekeeper thing. I just dusted the house myself this morning and it only took about 30 minutes and was really fucking easy. I don’t know why I was so dang reluctant to do this job in the past. It wasn’t bad at all. It was actually pretty enjoyable because it was so easy and makes such a difference — I love low effort/high reward activities.

That’s all for this morning.

time vs necessity

a friend once told me that he didn’t agree with people saying they “don’t have time” to do stuff. he said that even when we’re really busy, we always have the ability to make time for things, to reschedule or move appointments and crap around to accommodate whatever else requires attention. he went on to suggest that when we say, “i don’t have time for that,” what we are really saying is, “i could make time for that but it’s not a high enough priority to me.”

“sorry mate, i’m way too busy to help you with whatever. i’ve got like 3 seasons of game of thrones to catch up on.”

it was about 10 years ago he said all this to me, and i still think about it all the time and still agree with it 100%. so i’m careful about how i use the “don’t have time” excuse because i know that i’m lying through my teeth when i say it. there is always less time that i can spend napping, emailing, reading heavy metal and MMA news online, and fussing over my chickens, and i think most people in the privileged world are in similar boats.

we have a lot more time than we often like to think.

 

fuck facebook

real life only, please

i quit facebook a few years ago now because i was a full-on fb junkie. i was on there constantly. i finally decided i was simply wasting way too much time on things that just don’t fucking matter. i have been much happier and more productive since i quit but i just had a horrible reminder of what my life used to be like.

a friend of ours is having some car problems. she posted about them on fb. jenn asked me some questions this morning so she could offer some advice. great. but then as i was writing my last blog entry, i had to go on jenn’s fb to find a picture of our chickens. while i was there, i saw people commenting on our friend’s car problem situation and i felt the need to weigh in.

i wound up spending 20 mins, maybe half an hour, putting way too much thought and energy into what i was typing, only to have some guy argue a point that he was wrong on (despite his assertion, coolant will indeed create steam if it leaks onto a hot surface like an exhaust manifold, FUCK). i had to pause what i was writing to respond to that guys comment, then get back to what i was going to say before, and i was getting so worked up and involved in this fucking situation that actually has NOTHING TO DO WITH ME. STEPH WILL GET HER CAR FIXED OR BUY ANOTHER. WHAT THE FUCK DO I CARE IF SHE TAKES MY ADVICE? IT DOESN’T MATTER BECAUSE IT WILL ALL WORK OUT FINE IN THE END ANYWAY REGARDLESS OF WHETHER I WASTE 30 MINUTES AND SAY ANYTHING OR NOT. i finished what i was typing and closed jenn’s fb, feeling like a fucking turd.

what a perfect reminder of what an absolute waste of time so much of facebook is. there are certainly elements i miss and used to enjoy, like the abilities to keep in touch with some folks easier and see their pics, but i think those positive aspects are outweighed by the massive amounts of time spent doing fucking nothing, and the fact that facebook is selling your info to anyone and everyone. we are tracked enough as it is, i figure there’s no point in giving any more away.

i think we’d all be better off if fb just up and disappeared off the face of the planet. until that day comes, i’ll just keep pretending that’s already happened and stay busy doing real stuff in the real world.