Bryan’s Ramblings

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur always bring about extremely reflective and emotional thoughts inside my busy little head. It of course makes me want to become a better person and improve myself in whatever way(s) that I can. This usually includes promising myself that I will start going to the gym, start eating right, stop staying up late, stop procrastinating, and all that perpetual “New Year’s resolution” bullshit. Every year I hope that at some point I am able to meet those very meaningful and self-fulfilling goals. Of course, every year I fail miserably to do so…hence the reason for setting them every year.

Still, I’ve set them again for myself this year, and hopefully with something more of a plan than usual. I have a larger goal in mind this time; it’s a much broader target. I will reduce stress over the next year. I’m putting myself on a stress-reducing plan that includes all of the usual methods: more relaxation time, more vacation, and of course less work. As anyone can usually tell you but not actually do, the way to accomplish this is with more efficient time management. It’s the age old problem, and usually the root cause of all my headaches and problems in my life.

I never have trouble coming up with excuses to not work on something or to not do something or to not go somewhere or whatever. What I have a harder time coming up with is what the heck I’m doing that’s so damn important while I’m avoiding these other things (excluding, of course, the writing of this blog). I’m talking about laundry, bills, exercise, job work, school work, house work, and all that stuff. Sure, these things seem mundane and oftentimes they are, but if enough mundane things pile up, eventually you’ll have no clothes, have bad credit, be out of shape and have more work to do than time to do it. My life is rapidly approaching this state, and it’s a scary place to be.

Thankfully, the High Holy Days are here, and it’s time for me to carpe diem and do something to avoid having to live in an unnecessarily stressful existence. So during these Days of Atonement, I am working on devising a detailed plan to get me stress free and 100% happy once again. It’s a sort of phased approach (thank you corporate America…) that slowly works in all the aspects of a stress free life.

Time management just means scheduling and planning and getting into a [good] routine…all things that I have always been so poor at doing. Usually I fail to achieve these goals because I try to change them all at once, but I can take baby steps over the next few months to make progress. Unfortunately, I need to dig myself out of the hole I’ve dug thus far…which means being on overdrive for the next couple of weeks and plowing through it full force with little to no free time.

My new favorite phrase is “I made my bed, so I have to lie in it.” It’s so easy to blame others for the problems you create. This stops now for me. I will face the music each time it plays loudly in my ear. I have no one to blame but my lazy, procrastinating self. It worked so well in school, but it just doesn’t work in real life. A wise puppet once said “I wish I could go back to college.”

So I know what you’re thinking. “This guy is all talk.” Yes, that’s definitely been true for me in the past. All I can say is that I hope it’s not the case this time. I feel like I have more of a handle on things now with the High Holy Days here right in the middle of crunch time for me. I’ve always claimed that I’m not a pessimist, just a pragmatist. As I’m getting older, though, I’m feeling more and more negative, which just isn’t me. So I think I’m going to have to try to switch to being a perpetual optimist just to offset the many negative things that pragmatism (i.e. real life) exposes.

I’ll say this much for my life right now: it’s never boring. I have so much going on that if I don’t implement this High Holy Days induced stress-reducing project as soon as possible, I very well may hit a brick wall and never be able to recover. I can’t let that happen.

These fires seem to have come at a weird time. It’s strange how certain events can trigger random thoughts and emotions that have virtually nothing to do with what triggered them. I like lists, and for me, things very often come in threes. I have three things on my mind right now:

1. Time. I have a problem with time. I don’t like it. There’s never enough of it. It doesn’t move fast enough but it never fucking stops. It drags when you want it to go by, and it flies when you want it to last. It’s different depending on where you are. It requires tons of management and planning. It’s an incredibly huge burden.Time is a resource. It’s limited. Like any other resource, we have to be careful with our time and try not to waste it. We conserve water, energy, gas – why not time? We waste time. We waste a ton of time. Don’t we? Of course, you can’t always consider “using” time to be “wasting” time. That’s true of any resource though. We never “waste” water – we just “use” it when we need to. We do the same with time. We use it at night to sleep, and we use it during the day to work. But also like any resource, we’re always trying to find ways to use it more efficiently. We invent more efficient cars, more efficient toilets, more efficient appliances, and we are always trying to find more efficient uses of our time. Our teachers and parents always tell us to anyway. Time is all over the place. Count the number of times you look at a clock in a single day. You’ll be surprised how concerned with time you are. You always hear expressions like “We have all the time in the world” or “I’m just taking my sweet time” or “Time flies when you’re having fun” or “What time should I meet you there?” or “It’s time to go home.” Time itself takes up quite a bit of our time. What is time anyway? It’s just the Earth moving around the Sun. Right? Yes…but it’s so much more than that. It’s the enemy of every single human being on the planet. It’s our biggest nemesis as we all race against the clock to beat it. The problem is, though, that time always wins. It always fucking wins. It’s impossible to beat because it’s so consistent. Sure, we try to mess with it sometimes. We flip the clock back an hour or forward an hour every so often. It doesn’t matter though. Time is still time and it will still go on and on like the Energizer bunny until the Universe implodes and there is nothing left. There’s nothing we can do but keep plugging away and fighting this forever losing battle until our inevitable demise. It’s sad really. Still, maybe one day we will find a way to beat time. It doesn’t seem likely, but it’s that small hope that keeps us all going I guess. I will continue to try to manage my time, use it more efficiently, and consantly try to beat it until I either die or invent the Flux Capacitor.
2. Comfort. I’m not sure I always know what makes me comfortable. I mean, I know specific things that make me comfortable: my parent’s house, my room, my bed, my car. I know certain people who always make me comfortable: my mom, my dad, my sister, my best friend, my girlfriend. My problem is, in the absence of those things, I am unsure of what else I can use to fulfill my need for comfort. I’m not talking about those uncomfortable situations like an airplane or a public bathroom where there is nothing you can do but grit your teeth and bear it until it’s over. I’m talking about those middle-ground, in-between places like a workplace, a party, or someone else’s space. In fact I’m talking specifically about those three situations. I mean I’m not really UNcomfortable in those places, I’m just not really comfortable either…particularly for long periods of time. I’d always rather be in one of those aforementioned places like my mom’s house or my bed. The place is what’s most important I think. Even if I’m with a friend or family member somewhere “outside my comfort zone”, it only serves to ease my discomfort, not really cure it.Comfort is more a feeling or a sense than something concrete. That’s the root of the problem. It’s impossible to definitively define and thus extremely difficult to explain. For me, it’s not the discomfort that is disconcerting, but rather the fact that I’m never sure how to fix it. Do I really not know my own needs well enough to know how to comfort myself? That’s a scary thought.
3. Insignificance. There’s something like six and a half billion people in the world. So each one of us makes up about 0.0000000154% of the world. Do you think anybody really fucking cares about what you ate for lunch or whether or not you’re having a bad hair day. Let me tell you, the majority of the world doesn’t. I mean they don’t even know you. Think about it. How many people do you know? In your wildest dreams you could never even know 1% of the people in the world, let alone the U.S. or the state of California, or even the city of Los Angeles. Even if you loosely define “know” to mean “indirectly interact with” you couldn’t meet this percentage. So think about that the next time you get mad at someone, or feel hungry, or miss a deadline, or fail at something. It’s really not that big of deal after all. Right?

So my therapy for tonight has come to a close. I think the only thing left to help cure my mawkish state is to get some sleep.