find what really makes you happy

May 20, 2015 6:26 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I was thinking about a study I read several years back.  It was about how children that would instinctively put off instant gratification and momentary gains and instead pursued long-term rewards would statistically go on to have more fulfilling and successful lives.

What brought this on?  Well, I suddenly realized how far into 2015 we’d gotten and how the first quarter went past in a blur and the second quarter was close to done and I hadn’t reviewed the progress of my yearly goals yet.

Why hadn’t I done this?  I suppose I could give various excuses from being too lazy to dealing with illness in March to this and that but I also have to be honest and admit I have been partly dreading this.  I haven’t been doing as well as I’d hoped to be at this point.

So I was walking in downtown Houston the other day and thinking about this.  It was after dark and downtown was mostly deserted and it was cool and quiet.  Near perfect conditions to think.

Were these goals making me happy or were they becoming obsessions that would not yield long-term satisfaction?  Was I eschewing short-term gratification to pursue these goals or just denying myself living my life for no good reason?

I mean I created these goals in order to have a better life and to do something meaningful.  I think I did a pretty good job of it as well but the thing is that for some of my goals I think that I am pouring good resources into lost causes and basically wasting them where I could instead be using them for other projects.

So I have to evaluate these goals and see if these are worth continuing on and if I just hang on a little longer that things will get better or if I’m just hanging on due to some sense of pride that won’t let me quit on these goals.

I think that’s what I meant by the title “find what really makes you happy”.  Sit down, look at these goals, and see if they will truly make you happy.

Posted in: activities, advice, goals, motivation, plans

A time for everything

May 18, 2015 6:12 AM , Leave a Comment ,

The rain’s been relentless this past week.  All I hear about on social media and on the radio is how awful the rain is and how it ruins plans.

Yes of course that aspect of the recent heavy rains is regrettable.  The rains affected some plans I had one day and the power outage stopped my office work on another day.

On top of everything when we get real Houston style storms it gets pitch black outside and with the lightning and thunder you get a feel for the fury and power that nature can wield.  Not all that fun but this is the rainy season in Houston.

But the thing is that if we look cross the country we can see what it’s like to have permanent “nice weather”.  California is going into its fourth year of drought and conditions are reaching a critical state.  I hear horror stories from my California friends about dead lawns, livestock, and water rationing and listen to their speculation as to where they may be able to move to in order to escape this disaster.

Of course along with our rainy season we get our dry season in Houston; July, August, and September.  The season when clouds will not dare show their faces unless they have a hurricane to give them backup.  These will be the endless afternoons where the sun will be relentless and refuse to set till after nine at night.

It’s curious to me that during these days that people won’t complain as much.  To me at least, this type of weather is as bad or even worse than rainy days.

For my part, I am glad for these rainy days and rainy weeks.  Every time we get one of these events I comfort myself thinking about all those water reservoirs that are north and east of Houston and I hope that they are topping off with fresh water.  I think about my California friends and their hyper abundance of “nice days” and I hope that sometime soon that they will be able to enjoy a rainy Houston day.

 

Posted in: attitude, environment, Houston, thought, weather

meet your needs

May 16, 2015 6:19 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Sometimes it’s difficult.

Repetitions or reps suck.  But you have to do them and you have to keep doing them till you start getting somewhere.  But they still suck.

Laps suck.  Going up and down the same lane over and over again.  Swallowing pool water, stinking of chlorine.  Why do I keep doing it?

After an hour or so I leave feeling a bit wobbly, a bit achy, but no stronger.  Or at least I don’t notice it.  That’s the thing about exercise.  You really don’t notice any improvement at first or at all for weeks, months, if not years.  As you get stronger you get accustomed to your new body and don’t notice any change.  But it all takes time.

Sometimes, when I look across at some of the power lifters or the competitive swimmers, or the fast runners I want to try to match them, to get onto their level.  Tired of waiting and going through the slow process.

I can maybe keep up with them for a little bit.  Match them stroke for stroke, lift heavier, keep pace running but after a bit I falter.  I’m not there yet.

I have to remind myself that I should not train to their pace but to my pace.  I remember way back when I first started and runners would jog past me as I started walking, not even running, but walking and how frustrating it was.  But I knew I wasn’t ready yet.  Over time I began to run and I could even pass some slower people but by that time that didn’t even matter at all.

It was the hard work and the commitment that mattered the most.

That’s what I have to remember these days.  I need to work out to meet my needs not do the work out that meets the needs of other people.  More patience, more hard work, more commitment.  That’s the only way that I’m going to achieve anything.

Posted in: activities, exercise, habits

attachments

May 14, 2015 6:13 AM , Leave a Comment ,

People are weird.

At one moment we can be calm, rational, and sometimes even distant individuals and the next moment we act with passion, with humor, and even with childish glee.

An example.  I was having a Twitter conversation the other day about cars with a close friend who had also recently bought a car.  We were discussing car nicknames.  We both had given our cars nicknames, and it wasn’t just us as several others chimed into the conversation with their pet names for their cars.

Here we were, adult individuals and we were giving our cars pet names like we were kids or something.  Another example?  I went to register my new car on the car website and they actually asked if my car had a nickname.  Why?

My car won’t go any faster or save more gasoline or avoid other cars with a nickname.  So why do it?

Maybe it’s a hold over from childhood as we named everything in our small world in order to get a small measure of control over things that were otherwise out of our control.  Maybe it’s a relic from the days when Greek sailors would name their ships and paint eyes on the bows so the ships would “see where they were going”.  A little bit of home-made magic.

Maybe in a cold digital and increasingly distant world we need to feel that there is something warm, organic, and familiar around us.  Even if it is something lifeless like a car.  Giving it a name seems to imbue it with a little bit of life, seems to make it a little less cold and a little bit warmer.

Sometimes we all need that in our life.

Posted in: Automobiles, habits, life in general, thought

Extra energy

May 12, 2015 7:06 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note:  This is an edited and reprinted post from April 2007]

So I step out of the house and go to my car this morning and I see that nature has pollinated all over my shiny Dodge.

The formerly midnight blue glossy coat was now covered by a yellow dusty cover. Those harlot pine trees had done all their business all over my car. Nature is in full bloom

Birds and bees are doing unspeakable and I would think unnatural things. Couples out together, the wafting fragrances of Spring are in the air and a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of how long it had been since he had last…..pollinated.

Other species have it easy. Young Rams for example will butt heads to see who is the fittest and strongest one to mate. This has two advantages. One it assures the survival of the species, but a more socially practical benefit is that the losers have such a bad headache they forget all about pollination for the rest of the year and don’t cause trouble.

Human males of course don’t butt heads, and the only other suitable outlets for this frustration (pillaging, war, midnight street racing) are tightly regulated by law these days.

So that tends to leave a lot of pent-up energy that needs to be released. Now people with the time and the inclination will use up this energy with hobbies, working out in the gym, plotting world domination, or discovering unified field theories. Luckily my laziness has evolved beyond these simple pass times to embrace a much more worthwhile endeavor. Beating up orcs in Everquest.

So whenever the frustration is too great I’ll take out my high level character and wander to one of the beginner zones and start pounding the hell out of anything that moves.

No one but computer generated files suffer and after an hour or two of laying waste to an entire culture you get a sense of satisfaction and forget about any other needs.

Of course that still leaves my pollen covered car in the drive way, but that’s what car washes are for.

Posted in: activities, attitude, culture, dating, life in general, relationships

mindless hate

May 10, 2015 6:28 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Sigh.

It takes a lot to get me angry these days.  Maybe it’s a function of age and passions have cooled, or maybe I don’t have as much to get angry at these days.  Sure there are things that frustrate me, all around me and I get frustrated on a daily basis.  But anger doesn’t manifest itself in my life anymore.  At least I didn’t think it did.

I was driving around getting various chores done early on a Saturday morning.  I pulled up at a turn signal at a large intersection and as happens more often than not there was a panhandler there.

He looked thoroughly beat up by life.  Dark tanned skin, ratty and dirty clothes, and nothing than skin and bones.  Most public officials frown on people helping out panhandlers but I will pass out a few dollars every once in a while and I suppose I will continue to do it in the future.

But just before I hand my money over he stops me and pulls out a printed sign.  He asks me if I was a christian and just then I read the sign that’s filled with a litany of hateful anti-homosexual messages.  The sign looks like it was printed on a computer and the paper was laminated so it could survive out on the streets.  I think to myself “You’ve got to be kidding me”.

He starts up on some rehearsed speech denouncing same-sex marriage.  I stop him in mid-stride and tell him “I am not going to listen to this.  We are not going there.”  He walks off down the median and mumbles something that sounded like “Have a nice life, homosexual lover”.  Of course he didn’t say homosexual.

I think about getting out and saying or doing something regretful but the light turns green and I drive off instead.  I have to control my foot to not floor the pedal.

I am incensed.

It’s a naked, mindless bigotry that I have not witnessed in a long time.  It’s not the veiled or hidden prejudice that you see in popular media or hinted at by people you may casually know.  It was this stupid, in your face, and even prideful hatred that I thought no longer existed except in some of the most backward of places in the middle of nowhere.

I am flabbergasted for the longest time.  Just mulling it over and over in my head.  It’s like I can’t believe I just had this encounter.

What makes it worse is that this is a guy that most likely has had to live with the sting of prejudice against homeless people.  People have probably made negative judgments about his character without knowing anything about him and here he is doing the same thing.  I want to find this guy and ask him what made him turn into this hateful person?  Was it his family, a teacher, some friends that warped his perspective and made him the way he was now?

I am left angry by the encounter.  Angry that this still exists, angry that people can still fall prey to such notions.  Angry that I can’t really do that much to change the situation.

I wish I could end this post on a happy note but there is really nothing happy about the episode.  This is just sad.

Posted in: culture, driving, Houston, life in general, prejudice, religion

Hemlock Grove – online series review

May 8, 2015 6:10 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note:  This will discuss details from the series Hemlock Grove.  If you don’t want to know you should stop reading now]

Netflix has invested heavily into producing original content to stream through their service and although they’ve had great success with series like Orange is the New Black and House of Cards, not everything has been a resounding success.

Don’t get me wrong.  Hemlock Grove is not a terrible show but it does have some problems that I believe led to the decision that it will be cancelled after the upcoming season.

Hemlock Grove is a series based on the novel by Brian McGreevy and centers around a rich family, The Godfreys, that practically own the small town of Hemlock Grove.  Into this situation arrives a gypsy family (The Rumanceks) and they live across the lake from the Godfreys.  The story takes place as a series of paranormal events are taking place and involve all the main characters.

The shows mixes all sorts of paranormal and horror elements including werewolves, vampires, strange curses, and mad scientists but it also mixes a healthy dose of teenage angst and soap opera situations into the mix and that’s part of the problem.

Hemlock Grove has an identity problem in that it really doesn’t know what it is and where it’s going.  The other problem it has is that it can’t properly pace the storyline to keep the viewer engaged.

Season one played out at the beginning too much like the Twilight movies.  The whole vampire versus werewolf conflict played out as a fight for the affections of one of the heroines of the show.  Some episodes went back and forth and really didn’t advance the story along and then all of a sudden all the action occurs in the last couple of episodes.

Season two began with no clear storyline and then slowly developed one and then things took bizarre twists and turns involving religious cults and psychics and then resolved that storyline mid-season and introduced a second one possibly involving space aliens at the end.

It’s a bit of a mess and a little difficult to follow.  The other thing that makes it difficult to watch is the gratuitous use of blood and gore.  Granted you can’t make a show with werewolves and vampires without some blood and gore but this show seems to have gotten a bulk discount on fake blood and is intent on using it.

All that being said the show does have some memorable characters in it and the idea of bringing the paranormal and horror elements into a contemporary setting generally works for me but the execution is clumsy.

If the producers had taken a more evenhanded approach and slowed the pacing down a bit I feel that this would have been a much better series.  Unfortunately the Netflix management felt that the series was waning in popularity and will end the show with the upcoming 3rd season.

Hopefully some producers will learn some lessons from Hemlock Grove and make a better effort at a contemporary horror series at some future date.

Posted in: Horror, review

Making time

May 6, 2015 6:34 AM , Leave a Comment ,

It may seem odd but I have found that when you’re the busiest and have the least time, that’s when you need most of all to have some time off for yourself.

I can’t claim to be the busiest person I know.  I know plenty of other people who are busier but I’m no slouch.  I’m basically up and moving around from four in the morning till 10:30 at night.  I have a ton work and family things to do and I never have enough time.

Work, exercise, and home life take up my time during the week.  In what few time gaps I get I do every day chores and take care of things that need to be done but I always keep busy.

Sometimes it seems that the weekdays roll into each other and that my “morning” began on Monday and my “afternoon” ended on Friday.  Not that healthy for a person to do that all the time.

The weekends have their own set of responsibilities but it’s not as hectic as the week so I use them for what they were meant to be used.  I take a “break” from the weekly grind and I try to do something different.

Doesn’t really matter what you do.  Go clubbing, a hobby, go dancing, read for an evening.  The point of a “break” is just that.  To break the monotony of the routine and let the pressure on your mind ease up.  Let it breathe a bit.

Don’t kid yourself that you can keep going all out all the time.  Maybe you could when you were in your twenties or even your thirties.  But one thing I’ve found that in my forties that I can’t keep doing that all the time.  It gets unhealthy not to let the pressure off your mind.  You start missing obvious problems, you start accepting “less than the best” efforts, you get despondent.  I find that over time my dynamic thinking skills deteriorate and I start just doing the “wash, rinse, and repeat” type of cycle every day.  Unless you work at a fast food place that’s no way to work.

Think of this as maintenance or a tune up for your mind and body.  A way to keep going throughout the year at peak efficiency.  This is probably the cheapest way that you can keep yourself going without having to take a full-blown vacation.

 

Posted in: activities, family, life in general, work

Dark and Stormy Night – Movie review

May 4, 2015 6:48 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Standard Spoiler – This discusses details of the movie Dark and Stormy Night.  If you don’t want to know what happens then stop here

I usually review movies that I see in theaters but with the advent of internet streaming services, people can distribute movies directly to audiences without having to go through movie theaters in the first place.  Dark and Stormy Night was brought to my attention on Google Play as something I might be interested in.  For once they got it right.

Dark and Stormy Night was written by Larry Blamire who had previously directed the successful low-budget sci-fi film, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, a film that spoofs low-budget b-movies from the 1950s and 1960s.  Instead of tackling science fiction, Dark and Stormy Night tackles haunted house movies and adds a healthy dose of 1930s screwball comedies.

The film stars Daniel Roebuck as 8 o’clock Farraday, a crusty big city reporter and Jennifer Blaire as Billie Tuesday, a wisecracking reporter trying to “outscoop” Farraday.  The two reporters show up at a spooky mansion in the middle of a rainstorm for the reading of a Will and instead find themselves in the middle of a murder mystery with elements of ghosts, escaped mental patients, a serial killer, and a gorilla to complicate matters.

Just to make things even more interesting a motley assortment of characters shows up for the Will reading.  Each one of these individuals seems to have a shady past and may be the murderer but they keep dropping dead at the most inopportune moments.

The fun aspect of the film is seeing all the standard mystery and horror clichés trotted out and made fun of over the course of the movie.  It’s by no means a cerebral film and it’s not meant to be.  Rather it’s meant to be a way to pass a dark and stormy evening at home, and at $1.99 rental fee, it’s well worth it.

Posted in: movies, review

The new old age

May 2, 2015 6:59 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I was out at an actual rock concert this week.  I don’t mean a concert by some local band but an actual large arena rock concert.  I can’t remember when I did this last.  Certainly not since college and possibly even since before that.  I was even more of a square back then than what I am now.

I went to see The Who on their 50th anniversary tour.  It was a toss-up between this or Rush in May but I figured this may be my last chance to see this band so I opted for this.  I figure Rush has another 10 years left in them at least.

I was worried I might look out-of-place at a rock concert.  Being a middle-aged dude at what is usually a young person’s event.  What would I wear?  Should I try to look more “punk” or “hard rock”? Would people think “what is he doing here?”  Boy, was I totally wrong.

If anything I skewed towards the younger end of the spectrum and the more grungy end of the clothing.  I arrived at the Toyota center and I wondered if I got there on the wrong night.  The place was full of “suburbanite-like” people.  These people are here for the rock concert?  Where are all the long-haired hippie type people?  Then I realized that they were right there in front of me.

I bought a concert t-shirt and headed up to my seat.   I was walking round the giant stadium and passing some folks using walkers.  I sat down and proceeded to do some people watching, one of my favorite pastimes, as I waited for the concert to start.  A few rows down was a guy that looked like a silver-haired judge with his wife.  A guy sitting near me had a crew cut, wore a button down shirt and had penny loafers, and looked like he belonged in some office building instead of here.  Bit hard to imagine these guys as sixties teenagers jamming out to The Who but as soon as Roger Daltrey started belting out the hits they began coming alive.

Speaking of being alive, Daltrey and Townshend were amazing as they ever were.  They could still bring it.  It’s no wonder that they been touring for so long.  They were totally worth seeing.

I then began to reflect on what old age means now and what it might mean in the future.  It would definitely not be the “classic” definition of old age.  I mean of course the idea that at some point you “retire” from your professional life and also pretty much retire from interaction with your community. My dad unfortunately subscribes to this view of old age and has become set in his ways and pretty much refuses to try any new activity.  He frequently trots out the excuse “I’m just getting old” and with that refuses to consider trying anything new.

The new old age now focuses on transitioning away from the activities that you participated previously (an active work schedule, full social responsibilities, various commitments) to one that emphasizes relaxation and developing oneself.  Developing the body, developing new skills and interests, and just trying out other facets of life.  This is a far cry from the traditional model of just marking time and waiting for the end of life.

I find this oddly comforting and hopeful.  You don’t have to “quit” being you at some prescribed age.  You don’t have to “act your age” and not enjoy the music or activities of your youth.  You can still be you no matter if you’re 20 or 40 or 80.  Your life is yours to do what you want regardless of age.

Now more than ever I am thankful that I have begun taking care of my body.  I want to be able to enjoy what life has to offer and to contribute what I can to life for as long as possible.

Posted in: activities, aging, attitude, music