November 1st, 2015

November 1st, 2015

It wasn’t especially surprising to me that I woke up feeling lethargic and shitty this morning.  I’ve been around the block enough times to know that if I only get three or four hours of sleep in a night that I’m not going to feel particularly good for a couple of days.  Not only that, but I did a rather copious amount of drinking on Friday night, and no home remedy is going to save me from a hangover plus a lack of sleep.

Since I started working out in my free time, my weekends have really only become an outlet of that part of my life.  Despite the fact that most self supporting adults use the weekends to accomplish various tasks and use up all of their free time with their various lists, errands, and general other shit that adults do, I have never really experienced that part of life.  This Sunday would be no different.  Except for one very important fact: the weather was as shitty as my head’s feelings.

So the question then becomes: what do I do with myself when I can’t work out and I don’t have any pressing things to accomplish? I guess it’s a football day, but who really gives a fuck about football? It’s over-hyped violence that has grown a conscience and has consequently become pretty boring to watch.  Added to that is the fact that I do not care about any particular team.  I suppose if the Saints happen to be on TV I’ll root for them but the likelihood of another NFC South team being on TV when the Panthers are playing (unless they are playing each other, I suppose) is basically slim to none. So yea, football is off the list.

Is the World Series still going on? I don’t know and - to be honest - I don’t really care. I can think of few less compelling series than the Royals and the Mets.  There’s no animosity, no hatred. If you believe current media trends there’s also much less doping and - consequently - much less excitement. I am somewhat joking on that part, but I am also somewhat serious. I probably sound pretty cynical when it comes to sports. That is not an unfair characterization of my current outlook. I’ll give you that one. I got into baseball when I was in college and truly enjoyed watching and following the sport.  Once I moved on in my post-grad world, however, the tune changed. I didn’t want to devote the time necessary to really FOLLOW baseball.  The result of that sentiment was somewhat predictable: I no longer followed baseball.  If you don’t want to follow something well then, don’t follow something.

Those are your sage words of the day.

I enjoy sitting on the couch pretending like I am watching something. I have my laptop - excuse me, my chromebook - sitting in my lap. The itch to “start” something burns pretty fiercely. I equate starting a writing project (this can be anything: blog, review, elaborate facebook comment, etc) to standing on the pool deck “waiting” to jump in and begin a workout. It sounds so easy to just jump in and let it flow, so to speak. But the reality is quite different. Having an “idea” is something that easily eludes me. When the spark strikes, however, it all comes out pretty easily. Motivation, thoughts, goals, etc all coalesce and it’s almost as if I struggle to type fast enough to get it all out in time.  At this point I’ve lost the metaphor to working out, as that is never really THAT easy.

But what do I do when I can’t think of anything? I browse the internet, searching for answers to questions I don’t even have, yet. I could lose myself all day and accomplish nothing because of the world wide web. Opening up Pandora’s boxes left and right, scouring through reams of useless information and diving into wells that I didn’t even know existed before I started clicking through Wikipedia’s hyperlinks.

It’s really quite endless.

People think black holes are scary.  They’re not scary. I can’t wrap my head around them and can’t relate to them in any way and so therefore they do not scare me.

The internet scares me.

It’s 11am; I’ve been up for four hours and I’ve accomplished absolutely nothing. Those are four hours of my life that I’ll never get back and for which I have nothing to show. At least if I had been sleeping I could say I was doing something. I love sleeping. Seriously. It’s fantastic.

11am sounds early in some respects, but it already felt super late in the day and the rest of the day had no superior upcoming prospects. What do you do when you’re a thirty year old male that’s reasonably healthy, has relatively few responsibilities, and has no errands that are pressing?

Well I do kind of need to hit the head... That eats up another 5-15 minutes of the day depending on how involved I get in Candy Crush.  

I also recently moved and am now at the end of a cul-de-sac, so some neighborhood exploration wouldn’t be such a bad idea.  The only problem with that is - as I mentioned earlier - the weather blows. I have relatively little to no interest in walks to begin with and since I don’t have a dog begging to be let out and run around in the dreary weather I’m fine not doing any exploration at the moment.

So it keeps coming back to the beginning. A circle begins when a new idea is presented but then inertia inevitably brings it back to the starting point.  The couch is pretty comfortable. The laptop is warm in my lap. It’s sort of cold outside. The television is playing white noise, essentially. There are plenty of things to look at online. I wonder what the best price I can find for an Xbox One would be…?

See?! It just starts again. Before I know it that search will quickly become one of devouring new game reviews which will devolve into watching youtube clips of various games and then listening to music and then remembering to check out the new trailer for the Star Wars movie and then…

Yea, you get the picture.

So I do what any rational adult does in the face of infinite boredom and sub-par (by the way, I hate that phrase because being sub-par in golf is actually quite fantastic) feelings: I take a nap. This nap was fueled by a lot of coffee (which is a paradox, right?) and my cheap bluetooth speaker playing the soundtrack from “The Proposition.”  The music choice may not sound prophetic, but if you’ve ever listened to Nick Cave, you’ll understand. It’s a little creepy. Pretty good sleepytime music.

I swear some of my favorite moments in life are those in between moments. It’s almost like you’re standing on a diving board and kind of bouncing in between reality and suspension. You have nothing to worry about, somewhat psychedelic creepy music playing and providing your soundtrack...and bang. Nap time.