Resolutions

I usually don't make New Year's resolutions. In the past I have found that they don't really work because they're too easy to make and too hard to follow through on. I've tried out some variations though. A good one was the notion of a monthly resolution. It's quite a bit easier to do something for just one month instead of a whole year, and then at the first of each month you can decide whether you want to renew the resolution or not.

Another thing I've done in the past -- one that has been pretty successful actually -- has been to pick a single area of my life to focus on each year rather than come up with a laundry list of resolutions. So for example, one year's focus was "fitness", the next year was "finances" another might be "nutrition" and so on.

This year I've got a new one. I wrote previously about the mental clutter that comes from a lot of undone tasks. Well, this year's resolution/focus is Finish Something. I'm the sort of person who thinks of something that would be useful, or cool, or that just needs doing and I'll make a mental note to do it but never actually get around to it. So these things pile up in my brain creating that pressured feeling of always being behind on my task list. This year, I've decided that I'm getting things done, but only those things that I've previously put on my list: No new projects until the all the clutter is cleared up.

So far, it's working pretty well. There are simple things like the oil that have been cleared up finally after years. As well, I've already managed to knock off a couple of video projects that have been pending for a half-year or so, and have started on one that's over half a decade old.

The great thing about it is that I love crossing these things off my list -- doing it is a wonderful reward, so it really is self-reinforcing behaviour. That's the best kind, because it's easy to keep doing. If I persevere, by the end of this year I will have cleared up about 30 years worth of task backlog, and then next year I can do this year's projects and next year's and then will have caught up. Hmmm. Then what will I do?

Hi, My Name Is Brent...

Over the past ten or more years I have come to the grudging realization that I am an addict*: I am powerless to resist the mesmerizing lure of television. There's nothing that I used to like more than settling down on the couch and watching TV all day on Saturday. Just laying there, drifting from show to show. Even better after we got our Maltivito(TM)** and I could watch six or seven hours of stuff that I actually cared about. But even before then, I'd happily go on a channel-surfing bender with few regrets.

When I started going out with Stella she did this one thing that absolutely amazed me. She'd finish watching a TV show and then turn the TV off. Just like that. Not even interested in what was on next. Even more amazing, she'd get up and go to bed rather than falling asleep on the couch during The Late Show. A stunning display of willpower, apparently, and she made it look so easy.

Of course, at times I'd get the notion in my head that all this time spent staring at the square was a tremendous waste of time, but that was usually during a commercial. Once or twice I even took a week or even longer off, just to prove to myself that I could do it. But it was like holding your breath. You can stop for awhile, but when you're done stopping, you start up again, full blast.

In retrospect, I guess I didn't have much of a chance. The TV was usually on in our house when I was growing up, and watching TV was just the default activity if you weren't doing anything else. Eating dinner? Might as well watch the news. But the problem with that is that when the news is over, you have at best a one-minute window before Becker starts where you can decide to get off your ass and do something else. It's easier to just sit there and watch the next thing.

But it takes so much time. A special one-hour episode of M*A*S*H chews up about 4% of your day, assuming you never sleep. If you do sleep eight hours a day then (a) I'm envious, and (b) that's 6.25% of your day watching M*A*S*H. But if you work for eight hours too, and maybe spend an hour going to/from work, and then spend another couple of hours eating and going to the bathroom and stuff, then you probably have only about five hours of free time a day on days that you work. So that hour of hilarious wartime action is now 20% of your free time.

(Brief aside: How long until we see a half-hour sitcom set during the U.S. Invasion of Iraq? Any bets? I'll say maybe within 10 years.)

Looking at it the other way, if you watch an average of one hour of TV a day -- (and most people watch two***) then you're spending the real-time equivalent of fifteen days a year gazing into the screen. Factor in sleep again, and that's nearly 23 dawn-to-dusk days of watching Friends. (Which might get a little boring, because there are only about 120 hours of Friends episodes, so you'd have to repeat three times.)

That was a number that really got to me. Twenty three weekend-style days per year for just an hour of TV a day? So... then two hours a day is... yikes! That adds up pretty fast. (Did you see how I did that? I took a whole bunch of small numbers and added them together to get a much larger number.) I figured that if I quit watching TV then I would have be able to do so much more other stuff.

But, I've tried quitting in the past, and generally was pretty successful for awhile, but it doesn't last. A couple of years ago I went for a solid month or more without watching any TV at all, but then that ended and it was over. At the time I think that I was hoping that by eliminating TV entirely for awhile that I'd watch less TV when I did start up again, but that isn't what happened.

And, of course television is an integral part of our culture, so you can't give it up completely and expect to remain in touch. I mean, if you don't know your Simpsons references then people look at you like you're a hermit. Some sort of balance seems necessary. I don't want to punish myself by cutting myself off from the legitimate enjoyment of things like South Park and Mr. Show, I just want to drop all the superfluous stuff like the various Law & Order and C.S.I. clones, which I can't remember 15 minutes after I watched it anyway.

So I started to think about my 2+ hour per day habit. If I cut down to, say, an hour a day, then that would give me at least an extra 23+ days worth of awake-time to do other stuff like, for example, finish any of the one-hundred-and-fourteen little projects that I've started or been planning to do. Read some books, learn to play Bridge, write some programs, make some movies, entertain some friends, take some photographs, go skiing, compose some music (Yay GarageBand! Talent schmalent.), or any number of non-passive, creative, social activities that would make me feel better about myself.

(Of course, it's a valid question to consider whether those other activities are really any better than TV. Do I get any more out of spending my time reading sci-fi novels or greek tragedies. The answer may very well be 'no'. Certainly some of the alternative things I could be doing are 'better' than TV in obvious ways: I could volunteer at the hospital or something. But by my thinking, low-value activities are still OK, because I'm not addicted to them. If I was spending all my free time reading comic books, then we'd have the same essential problem in a different wrapper.

Anyway, that's the plan. Limit myself to an hour a day and see how it goes. At this point I'm only ten days into the new program and have watched a total of 6.5 hours of TV, so it's going pretty well.

___

* You have my apologies to if you are reading this and are actually addicted to something serious and find that my claim to addiction trivializes your own considerable substance abuse problem. It is not my intention to diminish anyone's real suffering, especially some whining, politically-correct crackhead like yourself.

** "Maltivito" is our nickname for our RCA Scenium DRS 7000N, which is a DVD Player + PVR. It's a faux Spanish word meaning "little bad TiVo", inspired by the fact that the Scenium is sort of like TiVo, except that it doesn't do as much and it sucks at what it does do.

*** Except Internet users, who watch an average of an hour and forty-five minutes per day.

Razor Oil

I did something yesterday that is so frigging trivial it's scary, but made me so amazingly happy that I have to write about it.

I spent $2.27 on oil for my hair clippers.

It all started about four years ago when I gave in to my baldness and -- following Glenn's lead -- started cutting my hair very short. Not shaved, just a half inch or so. You don't need to be a barber for that, so we bought some hair clippers at Sears for $30 and I've been cutting my own hair pretty much ever since -- Stella helps with the bits I can't see/reach.

Anyway, time passes and it occurs to me that I'm out of oil for the clippers, so I make a mental note to get some more. Another year or so passes and I make a more forceful mental note. Almost a year ago, I created a folder on my desktop reminding me to do something about this "soon". I've seen it every day I've been at my computer for almost a year.

Having a lot of little incomplete tasks in your head is a little like having a messy bedroom. You can live with it, but there's this subtle pressure that builds over time. Finally in about September, the pressure behind this particular "to-do" item was too much to take. I obviously wasn't ever going to go out and buy this stuff because it was too trivial a task, so I'll make the oil come to me. I went on line, found an e-tailer that sold the stuff and ordered it. It was $4 and was going to cost me $25 (US) in shipping, but the $30 would be worth it if I could call that task done. Click went the order.

A couple of weeks later, UPS arrived at the door with a small box. I was slightly giddy. UPS guy gave me the box, and then said "There's a fifty dollar customs charge". (Insert sound of jaw hitting floor.) UPS guy showed me the invoice, which listed the contents of the box as "beauty supplies - flat iron, value $110". I gave UPS guy the feather-light box containing four ounces of oil: "Does that feel like a flat iron to you?"

I could swallow $40 (CAD) for some stupid oil, but not $90. I refused the package and got on the phone with the vendor to discuss the error. They said that they'd correct the error. Now, they could have done this by faxing a new invoice to UPS, but instead they elected to have the package travel back to Ohio (or wherever they were from) and just do up some new paperwork and re-ship it to me. This was more convenient for them because they didn't have a fax machine or something, and maybe more convenient for UPS because they didn't have to process any exceptional paperwork. Luckily, the only person inconvenienced was me, the sucker who's paying $40 for $5 worth of well-travelled oil.

So back it went. A week or so later, I got another email telling me that my order had been shipped. Time passes, my hair grows longer, work gets busy. I forget about the oil, which doesn't arrive. The issue drifts across my consciousness sometime in December 2004 and I check the UPS web site's tracking information. Guess what? My oil arrived and sat in the UPS facility for a week or so waiting for me to pick it up. Since I hadn't picked it up, it was being sent back to Indiana (or wherever it came from).

Pick it up? They didn't even try to deliver it or call me to tell me it was there.

"Forget about the clippers. I'll just pull it out myself."

Exchange emails with vendor. Stupid, stupid people. No response for days. This is followed by an apologetic email telling me that they're refunding my $30 because apparently they're idiots and it's costing them too much money to be idiots, so they're keeping the oil and pretending that I don't exist.

So today, I went down to the store and bought some oil. Then I had bubble tea. When I got home I cleaned and oiled the razor. I am so happy. Now all I have to do is delete that folder.

Bubble Tea

I've never had Bubble Tea before and I happened to be passing a Bubble Teahouse on my way home from buying oil, so I decided to stop and try some. You see, one of my resolutions this year was to do a bunch of stuff that I've been putting off doing for years, and I've been curious to try Bubble Tea for a long time now. It was about two-thirty in the afternoon and the place was quite empty, the one employee sat at a table in the front window of the store, staring forlornly at the world, poor guy.

The menu was extensive. I ordered a Coconut Milk tea, lord knows why. It took a considerable time to prepare, so I sat at the table in the front window and leafed through an issue of e-Week. The employee arrived with a large plastic cup that had been sealed on top, and a bucket of huge straws. Huge as in diameter -- probably half an inch or so. I quickly understood that I had to take the straw and plunge it through the plastic covering on the cup.

I can't imagine what I was thinking, but I took a sip before really examining the cup. I don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't what I got, which was a mouthful of an ultrasweet milky liquid with a few doughy spheres of something -- the "bubbles" -- mixed in. I found myself masticating and swallowing. Certainly not objectionable, but what the heck am I eating? I didn't know there would be chewing involved!

Examining the bottom of the cup, I saw a disturbing layer of these brown globby things. I sucked one up and spit it out into my hand to get a better look. Again, not objectionable, but... well... who thinks of stuff like this?

I drank/ate about half of the concoction when I realized that I was actually getting full. No wonder it cost $4, it's a goddamn meal. I was also getting nauseous -- I used to drink Dr. Pepper by the litre, but this is much more sugar than I can handle. I departed the bubble tea house and went to Ezogiku and had some real tea.