Bryan’s Ramblings

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.

I’m psyched about my first softball game of the Fall season tonight. Our Summer league was so fun that I’m really stoked to get back into it. Playing softball is great for the following reasons:

1. Exercise. It’s not something that I get a lot of, so any outside activities involving body movements is a plus. Considering I sit a desk for about 8-10 hours of my regular day, a little action is welcome. Even if I ever start going to the gym, it won’t be as fun since there is no competitive edge or joyful aspect to lifting weights and running on a treadmill.
2. Fun. Nothing beats the thrill of trying to catch a fly ball or getting a hit and rounding the bases. As a kid who loved baseball and everything the Dodgers, I of course dreamed of being a big leaguer. However, I lack the physical prowess, not to mention the skills or even the talent to become one realistically, so I’ll have to settle for the lowest division of community softball.
3. Bonding. I play with a bunch of my coworkers, and playing on a team together has pretty much been the greatest thing to happen to us as a group. We’ve really gotten to know each other and each other’s families through playing this game, and the feeling of comradery has never felt better.
4. Ego. I realize I’m not particularly good, however, when I do well it is an incredible ego boost. Since I am basically the youngest team member (now that my sister is gone), I am in better shape than most of the rest of the team. Even if I’m not in better shape, I’m more resilient without any of the knee or back injuries that go along with being over 30.
5. Escaping. For the hour and half (or so) that I’m playing, I’m not worrying about work or school or my car or my house or my laundry or my bills or anything else. I’m only worrying about left field and home plate. It’s a nice escape, especially with my other escape (the Dodgers) playing so poorly of late.

So, yeah, that’s it. I can’t wait to get out there and man left field. I will miss my sister this season, since she was always a spark for our team’s fire. Oh well… Time to go play ball!

Blogs are dumb. Still, I plan on using them here as a therapeutic ranting tool to help slow down the ever spinning gears in my messed up little head. I have no illusions that anyone particularly cares what I have to say, nor do I have any reason to believe that anybody is even reading this shit. Sure, I could use a journal – but who willingly writes longhand anymore, really? I type faster than I think, so this medium works better anyway. Sure, I could mark all of these as private so no one has to read my useless bull shit ramblings, or even just save a bunch of Word documents into a “My Writings” folder. But why not give in to society for a change? Everybody has a freaking blog these days, so who am I to not have one? I’m already enough of a nerd to have a lame web site with my own domain name – I really have no excuse not to have a blog.

Sites like MySpace, Friendster, LiveJournal, Xanga, and all the rest really make me sick. Don’t get me wrong though – I have accounts on three out of four of those sites. By “make me sick” I mean “are so clever, I wish I’d come up with the ideas”. I mean seriously, most people (with access to the Internet anyway) believe that the universe revolves around them. Every person wants to have his own “space” to post a bunch of crap that he thinks is important. That’s really our whole purpose in life as humans: to show the rest of the world how everything about us is cooler than everything about them. We are also a species who respond positively to visual stimulants like pictures, bright colors and obnoxious fonts – so the ability to display those at the same time that we promote ourselves is why these sites are so successful.

Speaking of technologies that I hate but use all of the time, let’s talk about cell phones. Here is my list of rules that everyone should follow in order to have good cellular phone etiquette:

1. Ditch the obnoxious rings. I admit, I’m mesmerized by them too, and I even have some on my phone. However, 98% of the time, my phone is on vibrate. It’s just more polite, and you never know when it will go off. If you don’t have your phone with you and you’re concerned about not hearing it, here’s a tip: keep it with you. If you’re a girl who keeps it in her purse and the vibration is not loud enough to hear it, I suggest either putting something rattly in your purse or doing the vibrate+ring thing so that it only goes to ringing after you haven’t heard it for a certain amount of time.
2. Use Caller ID. Most phones have it now, so when somebody calls you, look to see who it is. If you followed rule number one, you can discretely look and see who it is and either ignore it if it’s probably not important, or if it must be answered, go to a place where you can have a private conversation…which brings me to rule number three.
3. Avoid using it in restaurants and theaters or while in groups or public places with lots of people. Nobody else wants to hear one side of your meaningless conversation. Plus, if you are like most people I know, you yell into the phone and make it impossible for the rest of the people you are with to carry on a normal conversation, forcing them to all watch you as you talk about your day with your mom. Seriously, wait until you are by yourself.

That’s it. Three simple rules to make your life better. I still think that it’s complete insanity that we need to be reachable at all hours wherever we are, but that’s the world we live in now.

While we’re on the topic of cell phones, let me just say that I’m on board with the text messaging thing. (Using TXT as an abbreviation for TEXT is almost as stupid as using BLOG as an abbreviation for WEBLOG, but I guess that’s the world we live in now…) I wasn’t on board with the text messaging thing at first. I’ve had two major miscalculations in my lifespan as a techno-geek. One was not believing in text messaging, the other was not believing in MP3s. For the first one, I thought “How is that different from AIM?” until I of course realized that everybody always has a cell phone but not always a computer. For the second one I thought, “Just buy the CD!”. I truly didn’t get those things at first. I guess it takes the right people to show you how it’s useful though. It’s like the story my dad always tells me about the WAH-WAH pedal for a guitar. When it first came out, the demonstration showed a single “WAH” note and he thought it was really stupid…until he heard Jimi Hendrix use it the way it was meant to be used. It’s all in the application…

I think this has been a superbly successful and sufficiently satisfying session of writing to open up this blog for consumption. It was just the right amount of useless ranting that I was going for and will continue to strive to do in this space. I’m sorry for the lack of pictures and colors though. Luckily, you can still leave comments to give me feedback make me feel important…