10 Minute Rule

I heard a theory from a friend today. She suggested that a person’s productive ability is like a cup. I am paraphrasing here, but the idea is that we fill ourselves up to a certain level. Later, when we shed responsibilities, we cannot shed the level of production, so we pour more into everything we are still doing until we hit the rim. The thing is, certain people have a hard time ever emptying that cup. They tend to fill their time up with tasks or with depth on a particular task, because they don’t know how to do anything else.

Not surprisingly, I’m the guy who doesn’t know how to do anything else. It is a good thing, sort of. It means that when I reduce the number of tasks on my plate it increases the depth allotted to each given task. Sort of. That part varies from person to person. I’m the person who has spent so long juggling multiple tasks that it is difficult to reduce and enrich. I find that in the quiet moments, my mind devolves into chaos. I am so used to doing so much that when I have a moment to think about what I am supposed to do next, I get paralyzed thinking about how many things I could be doing next, and how many things I want to do overall.

This sort of thinking led me down the road to psychological organization. I know that the way to be successful is to have a mental construction of that success. What does it look like? What is important? What needs to be done by when? Again, I ain’t there. At least I know where there is.

Just finished the Blacklist, a frenzied attempt at high drama and (possibly) deep seeded familial intrigue. I watched it for Spader, believing the lead actress didn’t have the chops to carry a show. I was right about that part so far. I’ve come ’round again to the point where a new season of shows pop up and I start hoping that someone will hit the nail on the head and produce something that catches the zeitgeist and moves our society forward in the way we think.

I remain disappointed in the offerings. Its like this: someone gets close (like Orphan Black) and suddenly the commercialization of the industry forces them to pull back some of the more cutting edge ideas in favor of gratuitous action scenes, sex scenes, and or product shots. Modern television shows are convinced that the idea of being cool is more important and relevant than explaining what defines cool and what being cool means.

I first turn to books for these new ideas. I realize less and less people apparently read books in favor of a faster medium of cultural transmission. This is why the new show season is so important. Like it or not, these shows are a great chunk of how our kids learn bout our society.

1. I think I got the rants out of me. Mostly. Some weeks are like that–when all you want to do is provide a litany of barks and complaints about the world around you, because nothing seems right and nobody seems to want to do a damn thing about it.
2. Working on figuring out the trophy situation for the 4-5 yr old team. I think I want to go with rookie of the year and MVP. It is clear that some players who have never played soccer before are stepping it up. It is equally clear that we have 1 superstar and he needs and deserves to be recognized for his mad skillz.
3. I’m tired from the weekend. This is an emotional fatigue that may or may not let up by xmas….
4. Speaking of crazy holiday cheer, I want to take the fam somewhere far away from the lights and sounds of the small city and enjoy the scenery that is AZ at altitude. One day soon this ought to happen. Maybe Flagstaff holds promise in this regard. All I need is a cabin and a dream.
5. The NY Giants are dreaming of a time when they didn’t suck. at least 36 pts allowed in every game this season it seems. How do you play so poorly as a professional and still feel like you deserve top dollar. Heck, the Browns have a better record than you! There goes that Sayre’s law again. I’m emotionally invested in something that doesn’t matter. I watch it happen to my kids all the time. “Yeah, it is just a video game, but I will cut you if you take my wood.”
6. Okay, enough blathering. Maybe this week I will have something better to say.

Jayden Smith tweets, “If Everybody In The World Dropped Out Of School We Would Have A Much More Intelligent Society,” Easy to say for a 15 year old rich kid with four blockbusters under his belt. Now part of me wants to go old school Malcolm X on the dude and holler, ‘Get your hand outta my pocket!’ because he is (A) Messing with the minds of millions of Americans who both respect him and are looking for any reason to not learn and (B) He is messing with my livelihood and thus my nation by failing to realize that his reality is not that of an American but is that of the post-national 1% whose borders are defined by tax brackets and shared ideals. Yes, you can be more intelligent without the controlled curriculum of pubic schooling, but it requires a cadre of private tutors; a Rancho Solano-styled education where the parent cue more resembles the limo pickup line at the airport than anything remotely of the real world. Smith’s head is in the clouds and I wonder how long before he winds up delving into the world on non-prescription drugs in order to stay that high up.

He is one of a rash of recent cases of entitlement. He is an example that entitlement crosses racial barriers–as does ignorance. Take, for example, the many Americans who took to twitter after Ms. New York earned her Ms. America crown. There were gems like, ‘And the Arab wins Miss America. Classic.’ from a kid calling himself Pookie. My personal favorite: Egypt dancing? This is America. #MissAmerica. Two things here. 1: She’s American-Indian–the real Indian, not that crap Columbus made up. 2. The bollywood inspired dance she did in traditional Indian garb is about 3000 miles off of being even close to Egypt, which is about the same distance between Cali and NYC, or the space between the slow-firing synapses of these neanderthals on twitter. Jayden Smith, dropping out of school wouldn’t improve that, because these folks aren’t learning their idiocy in school (unless they live in Texas, in which case it is debatable).One person even tweeted, @ABC2020 nice slap in the face to the people of 9-11 how pathetic#missamerica in response to the news coverage of Ms. Nina Davaluri’s win.

Enough is enough. For too long we’ve proclaimed to be the world’s best, but in the age of new media all we do is showcase our worst. Every dumb, diamond grill-wearing, camouflage wedding dress having, Mountain Dew guzzling, gum-chomping, rifle toting American is on display to the world. We look like fools. When someone with real beauty and talent steps forward to restore this idea of what America was meant to be, all we can do is lump them in with everyone else on that side of the world who isn’t Chinese, Russian, or straight up Black. We accuse them of being immigrants, which somehow makes them Un-American?

Of course people still want to come here. Why wouldn’t they? The new American dream is crossing the border and finally being the smartest, hardest working person in the room. We are not a post-racial country. We will never be a post-religious country so long as we define the war on terror as a war against Radical Muslims. We will never be a smart country so long as we keep pointing the fingers and blaming each other for why we became so damn dumb. There is a lot of work to do, and each time I hear some noise like this I remember why I’ve made it my career and mission to do that work.

 

 

My weight fluctuates like a heartbeat, with Asystole reading at a meager 208 before it leaps up to 216 and dives back below 204. I’d like to live at 190 with good knees, high school speed, and college attitude. I’d love to believe that all these things are possible, but it feels like this longing glance backwards is drag tethering me to an earth that is moving on without me. We are rarely happy with who we’ve become. It is easier to cast backwards glances at missed opportunities, should’ve and could’ve beens with the 20/20 hindsight of maturity. Ironically, such actions are immature as we are nowhere close to an age where time travel is a realistic possibility.

You said things you shouldn’t have, you drank too much one night, you tried too many shrooms, you stole, you let people take advantage, you took advantage, you never said sorry, you never said ‘I love you’. I am guilty of some of those things as we all are, but I am keenly aware of how that past determined my present.

And I am grateful for every part of that present.

Some Thoughts:

1. I stopped drinking coffee at night in order to have a chance at a good night’s sleep. I wish I was more like my wife who can drink the stuff and fall completely unconscious an hour later. I’m more of a 2-5 hour guy, meaning my resistance (either physical or psychological) to the coffee is much lower than hers.
2. Bad fantasy FB week on the way. There is still hope of 3-0, but it is fading fast. I’m going to stop touching my lineup before I end up doing something stupid.
3. It occurs to me that nudity and sexual attraction are 90% about power. The girl who open flaunts nudity is far less interesting than the one who it must be teased out of. Perhaps that is why we want nude shots of actresses so much, and why there was (and in some circles still is) such a rush to get these post-Disney and post-Nickelodean stars to get naked. Ariana Grande is just the latest to face that demand. Don’t give in, girl. I want to be able to watch your show with my kids and not go ‘blecch!’

There are enough people that believe the end of days is around the corner that there can be multiple shows on Doomsday preppers. The latest, Doomsday Castle, is a surprising contradiction. The show features a patriarch who calls together many of his children (5 of who knows how many) to help him build a castle where they can all ride out the apocalypse. The contradiction is the fact that his three daughters are so anti-doomsday that they each appear to be auditioning for modeling gigs every episode.

Again, this could be my own perceptions warping how I see their reality and interpret the truthfullness of their actions. Who is to say that these make up hoarding women aren’t also the type to want to build a castle and live in the bunker beneath the castle with all the rats and bugs. Stranger things have happened.

An 8-8 drubbing this week brings my total to 19 – 13, which is bad enough to sit me at least 1 below any professional picker and the ‘majority rules’ pick for the nation. In other words, I flat out sucked at picking the games. I hit the average, meaning if you were to pick a game from two possible outcomes, you have a 50-50 chance of getting it right, which is exactly what I did. I wonder how mathematically probable matching the actual mathematical average is? Regardless, in picking circles in means I sucked. So, I come to you in week 3 as humble as the NY Giants (who are giving up 38 pts and roughly 5 turnovers a game). I am looking to redeem myself. Will I?

1. PHI over KC
Not the best start with redemption. We know what Philly’s offense can do, but we also know what their D can’t do. I should pick KC, knowing they have a strong O and a D with a backbone, but I refuse to believe the Big 3 are willing to lose back to back games this season.

2. GB over CIN
Going with the majority on this one. I don’t see CIN holding up to the passing attack.

3. DAL over STL
Fool me once…

4. SD over TEN

5. MIN over CLE
The Richardson trade will hurt CLE by leaving them with no offensive playmakers of note.

6. TB over NE
Going against the grain to take a chance on a D still coming together and a NE offense falling apart.

7. NO over AZ

8. DET over WSH

9. NY over CAR

10. BAL over HOU

11. ATL over MIA

12. NYJ over BUF

13. IND over SF

14. SEA over JAC

15. CHI over PIT

16. DEN over OAK

 

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Ratemyprofessor.com has some valid points but it is mostly drivel written by disgruntled students. Those who have problems are more likely to report to these sites than those who were pleased. In truth, you have to be enormously pleased or feel a civic responsibility to report in order to put in the required effort. That being said, my scores suck. They got very bad for a time and as I try to improve, setbacks set the scores on fire.
2. As I move to build greater organizational skills in my job and home life I find myself wondering if organization is really about constant step by step communication and reinforcement. It feels that way when coaching 4 year olds. Strangely enough, it feels the exact same way when designing understandable curriculum for freshman. I think they’re just used to having everything handed to them and then repeated when they elect to forget.

I spent yesterday’s ten minutes reflecting and having a pointedly emotional reaction to the way some people feel about and react to Facebook posts. It was a fair reaction, given the blog I responded to claimed that the majority of what I post on Facebook is useless and self-aggrandizing. Even though the post wasn’t about me, I made it about me (read: self-aggrandizing). I took offense to the recognition of something I saw myself doing. Then I thought about it more. I considered it in light of the media’s portrayal and non-stop coverage of the Navy Yards shooting and I realized that Facebook is absolutely about making you seem important. Moreover, it is about making what you say and do as important to those who ‘follow’ you as it is to you.

 

What we do and post on Facebook is the kind of thing we used to say and do in person. When we talk to each other in casual conversation we ask, ‘How are you?’ and ‘What have you been up to?’ Is it any surprise that the majority of FB posts and pictures read like responses to this unspoken query?

 

The rest of it is interesting still. The article suggested that folks leave cryptoids in order to gauge others interest in their personal lives or play out inside jokes in a public forum—the kind of thing you see in a high school lunch room. No argument there. Such statements recreate the insider/outsider dynamic and reinforce personal position as an insider stakeholder. It is a bit repetitive, as you have control mechanisms in place within FB to establish insider/outsider groups and determine who sees what information. Still, those posts serve as a check and balance or even a psychological reassurance that there is a cadre of people who care about you enough and are observing you enough to ask what happened. Those same people are the ones you are trying to reach when you preach; when you offer ‘unsolicited nuggets of wisdom’ that, as the blogger suggests, is all about you.

 

There is a case for dropping wisdom. In every group there is the advice friend. This person tends to dominate the conversation when others need either inspiration, redirection, or purpose within their daily routine. That sort of suggestive power goes to you head, and before long you wind up believing you have the right information, eloquence, and responsibility to drop these wisdom bombs. I do that crap all the time. It wanders into my head and I squirt it back out on the internet. I don’t feel like a wise man when I do it, but just another guy who had a thought that might help someone somewhere down the line who is experiencing the phenomenon I am discussing. In other words, it is about inspiring, which if you follow me on Facebook you know is about the most important thing I think a person can do.

 

Hopefully my response inspires someone else to consider why Facebook is the way it is and discern the value in that without openly dismissing it through snark and little substance.

 

Recently a friend linked to an article on the wait but why site entitled 7 Ways to be Insufferable on Facebook. The post artfully dissected and humiliated virtually every type of FB posting that was not the author’s own, claiming that these 7 types of posts were largely self-serving and, for the most part, elitist and exclusionary. The author writes:

A Facebook status is annoying if it primarily serves the author and does nothing positive for anyone reading it.

 

My immediate reaction was one of guilt followed by disgust followed by cold, clinical theorizing. I mean, sure I am absolutely of what the writer calls insufferable. #2 of 7 is “Narcissism. The author’s thoughts, opinions, and life philosophies matter. The author and the author’s life are interesting in and of themselves.” Hell, I do that almost every Monday (and Wednesday, if you think my picks are vain). After I spent a few moments thinking that, yeah, I am that guy, I thought, ‘what is it to you?’ The first thing I teach in essay writing is credibility. I tell my students to first consider the source. So, who is this writer? I have no idea. On the surface the blog is a hyperbole and a half simulacrum with far less self deprecation and far more snark. On the surface, the only thing the blog does is what it claims the purpose of a facebook post should be:

To be unannoying, a Facebook status typically has to be one of two things: 

1) Interesting/Informative 

2) Funny/Amusing/Entertaining 

You know why these are unannoying? Because things in those two categories do something for me, the reader.They make my day a little better.

 

Now, I was amused after I was guilty, because the writing is glib and I don’t take myself terribly seriously. However, when I did get serious about it I started to wonder what Facebook posts are for. Symbolic interaction theory suggests we recreate meaning and society through our symbols. Facebook is a new media medium for those interactions and the creation of meanings. When people share benign updates they are merely seeking forms of acceptance and connection to the larger world. Sure, it can be annoying, but it can also be the singular purpose of the medium.

If you don’t like it, go back to MySpace.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I am, of course, being insufferable here but I will mention that I did pretty well with my diet today, focusing on water and almonds as a healthy alternative. It got weird after school when I had a bit too much Wendy’s and topped off dinner with a slice of birthday cake. Progress aint always a leap.
2. Watched a Honey Boo Boo wedding, because sometimes it is easier to look at others and say, your situation is very jacked. At the same time, those people seem really happy, and if this is genuine happiness then I am extremely happy for them, because it is hard to get to that place where you don’t care about social expectations and instead do what makes you feel good.

 

 

I gained my faculty 15 quickly this year, the likely result of a shifting eating schedule and bad choices (such as soda). The good news is I believe I hit my peak and the only smart way is down. If I could figure out how to do that quickly, I’d be a millionaire. Of course, any good fitness person will tell you that it takes a little bit of skill and a whole lot of will–the latter of which has been M.I.A. for some time. Over the summer a friend of mine took it upon himself to snatch 70 lbs off his body and he is almost there. That is will, and a new wardrobe, and pretty bad ass.

So, I find myself once again looking for heroes like my suddenly weightless friend and the handful of authors I’ve watched rise from obscurity to success, because I recognize there is a ticking bomb out there. However, the bomb isn’t always enough. That tick tock, that urgency is all about my understanding that as one gets older (and wiser) it is harder to do new things, to create new things, to find a healthy shape and brain function.