Acting Like a Student

I feel worn out. I had to turn in a paper today for Dr. Mike's Developmental Psych class. The paper was a literature review and analysis of a study on mothers who were survivors of childhood sexual abuse. As part of the paper we had to summarize significant sections of the study, present several pros and cons of the author's methodology, and create two additional hypothetical studies related to the original study topic. According to Dr. Mike this should have been a five page paper. MY ASS! Mine was eight pages and no one I asked wrote less than six! Dr. Mike still contends that we probably wrote too much in trying to summarize our selected studies. Whatever!

I waited until the last minute, as usual, to write the paper. There's something about the thrill of intentional procrastination that works for me. Although, truth be told, I almost chose not to do the paper on time. It would have cost me a letter grade for each 24 hours that it was late. Since I can easily get an "A" on any paper that I write, taking an extra day to do a paper and taking a "B" isn't that big of a deal to me. Of course, that attitude costs me when the final grades are calculated.

Last semester, in Abnormal Psych, I had an 89.64 (a high B) before the final exam which meant that I needed to make an "A" on the final to guarantee an "A" for my final grade. Needless to say, that didn't happen, and I ended up with a "B". I could have made an "A" in the class if only I had turned in my term paper on time and gotten the 95 I deserved instead of the 85 that I received for being late!

It seems I am constantly locked in a battle between my desire to succeed and my utter lack of motivation. I know what I want out of life, but it is so easy to just sit back and do nothing, or let random distractions, like reading Raleigh's 20 year Comprehensive Plan for Growth, absorb my time (yes, I actually read stuff like that for fun... but that obsession is a whole blog post by itself!)

I suppose that leads to an important lesson of being a Lifer: Sometimes you have to do it today no matter how much you want to put it off until tomorrow. Granted, unless it is a life or death emergency, almost everything CAN be put off until a later date. But, there are times when the benefits of getting a job done immediately will outweigh the comfort of delay. We would never procrastinate directly doing something we enjoy, but we often procrastinate to do things (like homework) which indirectly lead to being able to do something we enjoy (like graduating college and getting a successful job). A key to having a life well-lived is to be mindful of these moments when the reward for action is more indirectly earned and to push through our natural tendency to maintain inertia. Perhaps, with a little effort, our dreams and goals will start to seem a lot more accessible as a result.

Have fun and keep living life... But stop procrastinating!

If This is Wrong, I Don't Want to be Right

I went to the grocery store this evening because I had a craving. Now, I wasn't craving broccoli, or apples, or kale. Frankly, if you have EVER had a craving for kale you need to see a therapist because there is something psychologically wrong with you! No, I was craving cake frosting! And not just any cake frosting. I wanted brightly colored, day-glo, all sugar and vegetable shortening, fat in a cup, cake frosting! The kind they decorate cakes with at the grocery store. That stuff is GOOOOOD!

In case you're curious, I bought the bright orange one at the top left of the picture. No, it didn't taste like orange, although I did notice, after eating half the container in one sitting (it was a one pound container, by the way!), that I began to experience a slight placebo effect that made me start to THINK that there was orange flavoring in the frosting. Perhaps my mind was trying to convince me that eating half a pound of highly sweetened fat in one sitting might actually be somewhat less unhealthy for me than logic would require. Well, at least for 30 seconds I was convinced!

I've mentioned before that part of being a Lifer requires you to live your live with enthusiasm, to make even the small moments enjoyable for what they are, and to not just sit still and be oblivious while the rest of the world goes on around you. So, why then does being a Lifer sometimes require us to do things that we KNOW are totally unhealthy for us? Let's face it, at 5'7" and 200+ pounds I didn't really NEED that cake frosting. But something inside of me COMPELLED me to the frosting! I had to experience the childlike satisfaction of eating something too sweet and too pretty for my own good. I mean, I could have bought chocolate cake frosting for half the price of the orange, and it would have tasted like something besides sugar. No, I wanted something that took me back to childhood birthday parties that I never had, with neon colored piles of kiddy jet fuel, otherwise known as cake. Except, now I don't need the damn cake. Actually I never needed the cake. Let's get something straight... Cake is nothing more than a vehicle for frosting! Why waste $12 on a cake when all I REALLY wanted was the $4 of frosting?

But back to my question. Why do we sometimes need to experience things which aren't good for us, and which we know aren't good for us, in order to experience life to the fullest? Maybe it has something to do with testing boundaries. Sure, we can all drive under 55 MPH and get safely where we are going, but eventually we just have to haul ass and see if we can get our cars up to 80 (or more) simply to prove to ourselves that we can. Granted, we may end up having to deal with consequences of breaking accepted boundaries. But even if we don't have to pay consequences, breaking those boundaries teaches us something about ourselves and the world around us. Breaking boundaries allows us to see things from a new perspective -- instead of always being on the inside looking out we get to be on the outside looking in. Breaking boundaries allows us to learn for ourselves whether or not the accepted wisdom for how we should live our lives is truly a good fit for us, or if we should try to push through and remake the map to fit our own needs and expectations.

I'm not recommending you go out and start hunting people as sport. That's probably one of the few boundaries that needs to stay in place for a reason. But, short of that, go out and find a boundary to test and push through it. However, while you do it, think about why the boundary exists: does it make us safer, does it make our relationships better, does it keep life flowing smoothly? Then, while you are breaking the boundary think about how you feel, and how does what you're doing make others feel, if applicable. Then, when you're done, take some time to think about what you learned, if anything. Do you understand better why the boundary exists, or should we all start to rethink our need for it?

So, what did I learn from eating $4 of neon orange cake frosting? Well, I learned that people are probably correct in saying that you should avoid eating out of boredom or to satisy some emotional need. I learned that, while the frosting did fill me with a temporary comfort, a momentary vacation to a time and place that never really existed (though I wish it had), it didn't really give me anything permanent; it didn't satisfy the overarching need. Instead of eating the frosting, I would have probably been better served calling a friend, or playing a game, or going for a walk. The frosting provided a temporary high, which is always followed by a requisite low, where human contact, intellectual stimulation, or physical activity would have produced the same (or better) high with none of the guilt associated with wasting money or not looking out for my health.

There's always a lesson to be learned in life if you are just mindful enough to stop and pay attention to it.

Have fun and keep living life... But don't forget to test a boundary every now and then!

Another Night at Waffle House

I can't begin to estimate how much money I've spent, late at night with nothing better to do, eating and hanging out at the Waffle House. If you aren't from the South, you probably don't know what the hell a Waffle House is, so I'll describe it. You know how you always want something meaty, greasy, unhealthy, but downright delicious after you've just spent the last few hours getting sweaty and drunk at a nightclub on Friday or Saturday night? Well, that's pretty much why Waffle House exists. It's one of those places that hasn't changed a bit in 20 or 30 years so you know exactly what to expect as soon as you pull your car into the parking lot.

Over the last 15 years, I've come to Waffle House an average of once a week, although in my early days I would come about 3 times a week. Back then, I would bring a small, thick notebook with me in which I would write a few pages of story material for a novel each night. For some reason, the drunks who would plop themselves at the bar next to me would always want to know what I was writing and if it involved the Waffle House or them. Of course, why the hell wouldn't I let this strange, inebriated, barely coherent person be the star of my novel? At the time, I just wanted to be left alone, so I would tell them no and ignore them while they continued to slosh through a one sided conversation about how you could tell alot of stories about the stuff that goes on at the Waffle House.

The thing is, the drunks were right. I think that's why I love the place. In my quest to get my life back on track I've discovered that one of the most important things about being a Lifer is to try and live your life with passion and commitment. There's plenty of passion at Waffle House on a daily basis. And there's plenty of people who should probably be committed (rimshot). Every night that you are there you see people enjoying themselves. They eat, they talk, they laugh, they hold hands, they act as though Waffle House, and the people that work there, are a part of their family. It doesn't matter who is working behind the counter, if you've been to Waffle House more than once, those people ARE a part of your family. You grew up there, you lived life there, and you learned important lessons. And if you eventually learned what a patty melt plate, smothered, covered, chunked, triple scramble on the side is, well that's an added bonus!

Have fun, and keep living life... or some approximation thereof!

Dance Like You Mean It

You may have noticed that I have a link in the sidebar to iDance.net. No, it isn't yet another Apple "i" related bit of marketing ploy. It's actually a website where you can download instructional videos for dance moves, most of them Lindy. I'm not really promoting them, or anything, I just think its a good place to find dance moves. The truth is, I suck at Lindy. I wish I didn't, but it's a very hard dance to get into if your town doesn't have a large Lindy community. Raleigh has a somewhat reasonable dance community at large, but the Lindy subgroup is quite small. It doesn't help that all of the Lindy dancers have been doing it for years and have become a bit jaded toward dancing with beginners.

I started dancing Jitterbug swing, a dumbed down cousin of Lindy, about two and a half years ago. To be honest, I began literally the week after my girlfriend left me. She had been dancing various styles of dance since she was a child and, shortly before we broke up, thought it might be fun to go swing dancing with me since I had shown her the movie Swingers and mentioned that I had always wanted to learn how to dance like they did in the movie. If you haven't seen Swingers you MUST rent it. The best way to describe it is to say that it is a chick flick for guys. And if you are a male Generation Xer like me you have been one of the characters in the movie at some point in your life. I'd love to sit here and brag that I have been Trent, but let's face it... I've always been Mike. Now I'm just waiting for Heather Graham to start showing up at the Elk's Lodge so I can ask her to dance!

It seems pretty pathetic to admit now, but initially I wanted to learn how to Jitterbug not as part of my quest to change my life around, but rather to see if I could impress my girlfriend and maybe win back her affections. Since I haven't seen or heard from her in at least a year I'd have to say that the plan didn't go as I'd hoped. Somewhere along the way, however, swing dancing taught me that I could live my life alone again and not have to subject myself to the self-imposed prison of work, sleep, eat, work, sleep, eat that I had created for many of the last 10 years of my "life". Swing dancing gave me an outlet to at least be around other people and not have to stand on the sidelines, staring enviously at others as they lived and enjoyed life. No longer did I have to wish that I was good enough to be around other people, or blame myself for being a "failure" at something which I had never had the nerve to even attempt.

I think that's probably one of the big keys to being a Lifer: Working up the nerve to scream aloud, in the words of Peter Finch in Network, "I'M A HUMAN BEING, GODDAMNIT! MY LIFE HAS VALUE!" And don't just say it. Mean it. Believe it. Feel it. And then at least try to do something about it. It doesn't matter if you end up moving in the wrong direction, but you've got to start moving in a direction.

Have fun, and keep living life... or some approximation thereof!