Wed: I don't like getting up early

What time is it right now? Is it past 5pm? Cause if it’s not I’m probably not fully awake yet. You people who are, you people who pop out of bed like it’s Christmas morning everyday of the year, I envy you people a little. At least I used to. I used to think that waking up early and the enjoyment of getting up before the rooster was something that warranted jealousy. I guess on some levels it still is, but over time I’ve begun to realize that not waking up early is the way to go. Nearly every fiber of me is convinced of this, and absolutely every fiber when consulted at 7:30am. (If you consulted me any earlier you’d just get some kind of weird unintelligible grunting answer, and I wouldn’t remember what I told you. Which is kind of a weird thought, and makes me wonder if it’s possible that I have some kind of alternate life between the hours of 5am and 9am that I never remember? If I live to be 70 years old, that’s almost 12 years that could’ve been lived by some alternate, early morning version of me that I just don’t remember. Odd, almost as odd as the length of this parenthetical aside) Back to the point. There must be a reason mornings and I don’t see eye to eye; some rational explanation. Here’s a few of the best I could come up with.

I enjoy peace. Quiet. And as much as those coffee commercials try and convince me otherwise; mornings are not peaceful. Birds are screaming, cars are honking, garbage trucks are somehow missing mechanical slam dunks with your black bin and instead flinging your trash all over your driveway. It’s a loud, ugly mess. Everyone seems to have bought into that early bird gets the worm adage, and never seem to put together that if you’re on a jam packed freeway with 80,000 other people, then none of you are the early bird. You’re all just right, smack on-time, and miserable because of it. No, mornings are not the tranquil escapes that they’re rumored to be.

I’m not entirely sure why people think they are getting a jump on the day by waking up early. I’m sure back in the days of farming and such when sunlight was at a premium it was true, but today….probably not so much. I for one would rather take care of business the night before. Studies actually show that people work late at night are more productive than the crazy eager beaver counterparts. Do you know why those people are getting up so early? It’s because they didn’t work hard enough the night before and now they’re trying to catch up. Even worse they couldn’t sleep all night because all they could think about was how they had work they had to do “first thing in the morning, can’t wait, need to do”. People who do the work the night before can go to bed satisfied; knowing that everything is done, finished, and sleep better for it.

Still not convinced? Let’s move on to really simple science then. The last science class I took was Physical Science 143 or some such class. We studied volcanoes, colored maps with crayons, and tried to turn on little tiny light bulbs with some batteries and wire. Needless to say I didn’t learn a lot. One thing I do remember however is the Newton’s first law : a body at rest stays at rest and a body in motion stays in motion. That pretty much sums the whole thing up. Once resting it’s inefficient to try and get back to work, better to slowly get the body in motion again and ride that motion well past midnight, then work can really get done. It’s scientific, it must be true.

On a more personal note, I grew up in the desert. It’s unbearably hot during the day, and instead of needlessly banging a sweaty head against this problem and continuing to force ourselves to get up early and face the blistering sun head on all day, it might make more sense to move to a more nocturnal schedule. Take a cue from the rest of the ecosystem and sleep in a little. It’s quiet and peaceful, it’s more productive, it’s recommended by Sir Isaac Newton, and based on all the other nocturnal creatures in the desert; it’s what nature intended.

"Wed": I dont like asking "So what are you doing after college?"

They say that the only things you can count on in life are death and taxes. “They” possibly did not go to College. If they did, they would’ve realized that you can also count on all 89 of your friends and acquaintances asking you “So, do you know what you’re going to do after college?” It's a lock. What you wouldn’t guess however is that 45 of those friends immediately follow that question with an apology for asking such a “painful” and “old” question. Those apologies caught me off guard. You just showed interest in my life, don’t apologize for that. In fact I applaud you for asking that question, it’s a tough question to ask, and I don’t like asking it.

First of all the question is so risky. It’s somewhere between asking someone how their grandparents are doing and asking a women if she’s pregnant. You might be bringing up a touchy subject. You open yourself to the awkwardness that this person possibly has no plan after college. Then you have to desperately back pedal and try and reassure them that it’s normal not to have a clue about life, and that they’ll figure it out. Or maybe you feel so terrible about the position your question placed them in that you immediately start to try and help them out. You start asking “Well, what do you like to do?”, or maybe “You know I have a friend who works in so-and-so field, they really like it, you should look into that”. Those attempts are admirable, and definitely appreciated, however it doesn’t do much to change the level of awkwardness that the question has introduced into the conversation.

Personally I don’t really enjoy asking the question because it sometimes seems like I’m asking "so, now that the world has beat the ambition and wonder out of you, what kind of life are you going to settle for?". So many of my friends enjoy college so much that slapping them with the reality of their inevitable exit and entrance into “normal” life sometime seems cruel. Not only that but in the event I do ask even the best answers are rarely too encouraging. Kids grow up wanting to be Doctors, Astronauts, Professional Athletes, maybe even a Chef. Rarely does that come true, and hearing the answer to the “after college” question just reminds me of that sad truth every time.

So all that being said, I had a friend ask me this question the other night, followed by the apology, and then followed by something new. My friend said that it would be sad if no one asked what I had planned after college, implying that it would mean they didn’t care. So with that in mind, even though I don’t really like the awkwardness, and I’m not a fan of cold reminders of reality, I’m going to continue to ask that question. It’s going to be awkward, possibly painful. But caring about someone’s life is often awkward and painful. I’m going to try and remember that for the next 90 times I’m asked the “After” question and appreciate how someone could do something I don’t like doing.

Wed: I don't like wearing contacts

There’s some things you take for granted when you’re growing up; stories with happy endings, 3 meals a day, no school on weekends, and perfect vision. I took those things for granted anyway. Inevitably things change however, you get older, you spend too much time reading in the dark, sit too close to the television, don’t eat enough carrots, and suddenly you wake up on morning and have some issues reading your alarm clock. “Whatever, it’s early, my eyes are blurry”, but slowly throughout the day things don’t clear up. You can’t read street signs, watch TV, recognize people from a distance, it’s frustrating. So you end up getting finally waving the white flag and getting glasses, or in my case contacts.

I’m really not a fan of wearing contacts for so many reasons:

Loss of sleep
I’m not a morning person so being able to hop out of bed throw on some clothes and be out the door in under 5 minutes was something I loved. It was one of the great things about being a guy. Now I have to stumble into the bathroom, and groggily try to poke some saran wrap circles onto my eyes every morning. It’s probably only an additional 2-5 minutes but when sleep is concerned every minute counts.

Inside Out?
So there’s this test to figure out whether or not your contacts are inside out or not. It’s called the taco test and basically you kind of squeeze the 2 ends together and if they form a taco then your contact is correct. I’ve been wearing these things for over a year now and still the taco test eludes me. And when you put them in backwards it’s like having a hamster claw at your eye everytime you blink. Then you’re in that weird catch-22 of opening your eye and dealing with that searing pain to get the contact out or leaving it shut and hoping it magically disappears or flips itself around. It sounds crazy now but when you have something in your eye, these thoughts seem reasonable.

Cinderella Rules
If you’ve ever had contacts then you know what I’m talking about. Right around midnight your eyes just can’t take it anymore, the dryness starts to set in. It doesn’t care that you still have 86 minutes left in Braveheart, those contact need to be quenched, and they need to be quenched now. Unfortunately this usually leads to the next reason-

Some Proverbs 16:30 Confusion
No, I’m not winking at you, I’m doing my best to keep these contacts from rolling up like nightshades inside my skull. So please accept my apologies. I realize that non-verbal communication is 93% of effective communication, but what’s going on there has no message except maybe “you don’t happen to have some eye drops do you?”

Fear of “the Lost Contact”
I’m told that this is physically impossible but it still has me worried. What if that contact decides to swing around to the back of you eyeball and just fall off or something? Where does it go? Does it just bounce around your head? (Did you just shiver right now? I know it’s gross right?). It is an eyeball after all and relatively round, what keeps the contact from just getting stuck on the inner hemisphere. Also you wouldn’t even know the contact was gone and you’d just be poking at your eye for hours trying to grab the contact that is no longer there.

It’s not getting better
Contacts aren’t like crutches, casts, splints, or braces. Your eyes aren’t going to “heal” and never need them again. It’s only downhill from here, and that means that everyday of your life you are having the worst vision that you have ever had. For those graph people, it’s a continuous, steady downward slope. The best days are behind you.

So I’m not really this jaded about contacts. In reality I appreciate the amazing technology that they are, and am grateful to them for helping me see every day. These gripes do float around in my head though, when I’m feeling particularly and unjustly stricken with the affliction of bad eyesight (which really isn’t that bad, it’s like a -1.50 or something). These Wednesday posts just allow me to make a list of things that remind me that God has a world waiting for me not affected by sin. And a body waiting for me that can sleep in that extra 5 minutes because it has perfect vision.

Wed: I don't like The Evening News

40-ish years ago, people would go about their day to day lives with very little idea of what else was going on in the world. Sure they probably checked out the newspaper with their breakfast, but that would just tell them what had happened yesterday, not what was going on today. Enter the wonderful Evening News.

Suddenly people had an amazing re-cap of the day, delivered by people who really sounded like they knew what they were talking about. To top it off, sometimes they even included some video to go along with the news stories. It basically blew that morning newspaper away. After sometime however; that Evening News slowly morphed into comically bad parody of its previous self, to the point where a lot of people -myself obviously included- just find it unwatchable.

I have to start with the anchors. As near as I can tell, the anchor used to be a person that came off as a seasoned, wise, almost professor like figure, who would take the events of the world and talk about them in an educated way. They also seemed to assume that the people watching had been following the news at least somewhat (usually a fair assumption cause THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE ON) and could talk as such. The Anchor was someone that you felt always knew what to do in any situation. That standard seems to fallen quite a bit. The Anchors today really just seem to be above average looking people with a clean delivery.

Can you read?
Yes.
Are you ugly?
mm No.
Do you have any idea what the European Union is about?
That’s a railroad in monopoly right?
You’re perfect.

I know that’s being pretty harsh, but that’s how they come off most of the time. At there best they appear to be slowly working on stand up comedy material, at worst they seem just as surprised about the news as they read as we do (really this is the first time you read that story, shouldn’t you have given a quick once over earlier so you could speak intelligently about it?). I wish they wouldn’t rely so heavily on the teleprompter, but they have to. When they try and wing a line or comment without it; best case usually some awkward unintentional comedy ensues, or worst case they try and make a joke-y segue to sports that has everyone fake laughing uncomfortably hard. Either way, it’s usually cringe inducing. Like this:



The news is also inconvenient. I’m not really ready to end my day at 10pm; I don’t want to wrap it up. That 10pm cemented slot really can’t compete with the 24 hour news channels or internet news which is updated all the time and available whenever. It’s almost like they’re blind to the existence of these other competitors and just plugging away with a losing formula. Change something, focus heavily on local news, spend more time and get more in depth on the stories, follow up with them in the following days, do anything to separate the local 10pm news from a bad 1 hour version of the news I can already watch all day long.

There is one thing they do try and do differently; they sensationalize small things to scare you into watching the news. For example there was the flesh eating bacteria that 3 people contracted a couple years ago. The news crews were all down at the local gyms showing how many germs there are and freaking people out about “Superbugs”. There may have been some validity to the story, but why not take the power of media and use it to explain the reality of the chances of them acquiring that flesh eating bacteria (which isn’t 100% fatal like they let you believe) are microscopically small, then calmly explain how to make them smaller. There’s no need to create un-educated panic. Those kind of out of proportion stories drive me nuts.

Interestingly the nightly news seems to be dying away, something that is attributed to the rise of the internet. For all its current faults I still feel like it has its place, if they would just have interesting, wise, maybe even ugly people tell a more complete story without adding craziness just to get a rise out of folks. In essence get back to basics.

Wed: I dont like talking on the phone

I’m not a huge fan of communication in general, probably cause it’s so complicated. I say something and depending on what I say, what tone I use, the accent, what my hands are doing, where my eyes are, where the sun is in the sky, what I say could mean something different. It’s so complicated, and that’s only a plain old face to face conversation. E-mail, text message, telephone, cell phone, wigwagging, skype, instant message all bring a new set of rules to the table. It’s all too much. If I had to pick one I could do without though it would definitely be the phone.

The rhythm of talking on the phone absolutely escapes me. I’m always talking over the
other person, interrupting them, or leaving too much empty space. There’s no cues to go with the words coming out of your mouth. I can’t tell when you’re finished. I think that’s why truckers always say “over” after they finish talking. There needs to be a phone equivalent of “over”, so I know when it’s ok to answer your question. It’s also probably because I’m impatient and have an idea of what your saying and just want to get onto replying, in a face to face I could just give you a look that says “Ohhh yea ok” and move on, on the phone I have to be rude and cut you off or just hang out and wait till the other person is absolutely positive I know what they’re saying.

If you’ve ever talked to me on the phone, there’s a good chance you wondered why as I was upset, or just waking up. I’m not totally sure why but I can’t ever use the correct tone on the phone. I’m usually pretty happy but if you talked to me on the phone you’d think maybe you killed my dog inadvertently by calling me. I try to sound happy or whatever and before I say something I give it a quick go in my head to hear how it sounds, but then I spit it out on the phone and….that’s not how I remember it going in my head.

Aside from the weird tone, talking on the phone doesn’t let you see how someone’s reacting to what your saying. I need that reaction so I know how to change what or how I’m talking to speed things up. I need to see the blank face, or the hurry up, or whatever.

I think probably the biggest thing is to talk on the phone you need to have something to talk about that is so important you though it couldn’t wait till you saw that person in the flesh (there’s some obvious exceptions to this). I really don’t ever have something I think is that important. If I think of something and you’re not there I’ll go ahead and bank it till I see you again, I you are there, maybe I’ll say something, either way I usually don’t think you need to hear about it now.

So if you ever call me, know first of all that I’m happy you called. I may not sound like it but I am. The only thing I might be upset about is I probably just wish I could’ve seen you in person instead, and I blame the phone for not seeing you.

Wed: I don't like dreams

I’m not talking about goals or aspirations. I mean the crazy things your mind comes up with to keep you entertained while you rest. But it’s hard to rest when you’re trying to save your family from being killed by Indians while running through the sanctuary of the Church that you attended in junior high with your friend from work who it turns out might be on the Indians side, except they might not be trying to kill your family, instead we’re just all going camping…..with President Bush. This is the real stuff that dreams are made of, and while at times they can be somewhat entertaining, for the most part I think they cause more damage than good.

Who are these people and what are we running from? just a typical confusing dream..

First off they never make sense. You always read in the Bible about people having dreams that explained some amazing truth, or lead people to the answer to the problem that they were currently facing. That idea holds so much appeal to me…..I can’t even explain it. Just the thought of being spoon fed an amazing revelation like that, and knowing with absolute certainty that it’s a can’t miss suggestion, certified, straight from the top message. That’s what makes dreams so frustrating. You know they hold so much potential. At times I’ll feel like maybe I’m just missing the message that the dreams are sending me, and that if I could just tap into some wisdom like Joseph, or Daniel then I would be able to divine some meaning from them and justify forever all the hours of contemplation that I’ve spent analyzing these products of my imagination. So far no luck though. I even tried writing them down to keep track, and see if maybe I had multiple puzzle pieces then something would make sense, but I just ended up with a lot of lost time, pieces to vastly different puzzles, and frustration. The worst was when I had a dream that was all in Spanish…I don’t even know Spanish, so that was probably the one dream I’ll ever have that was supposed to actually convey a message. It’s like dreams are really just around to taunt people.

Aside from being immensely maddening to try and decipher, there are other attributes of dreams that can make them a little less than enjoyable experience. The most prominent being the nightmare. Here’s the thing with nightmares, whereas regular dreams are hard to understand and easy to forget after being awake 10 minutes, nightmares will stay with you. I remember when I was about 6 I had one where Freddy Krueger would pop up outside my bedroom window and with the help of some of my parents friends (who shall remain anonymous, but I’ll never forget these people even though I haven’t actually seen them in 8 years) would throw grenades into my bedroom while me and my brother tried to escape. It sounds ridiculous…cause it is, but it’s that type of dream that doesn’t leave you. The absolute worst case is when you see someone close to you die in a dream. That kind of thing will be on your mind for the next couple days at least, wondering if maybe it’s in the realm of possibility that you’ve been given a warning, or at the very least a cruel scare.

There is a flip side to that coin though. There are always the good dreams, the one’s where you can do something that’s impossible in the real world. Or have you ever met a new friend in a dream that you don’t actually know in real life? The problem is you always have to wake up, and that amazing ability, impossible accomplishment, or worst of all, that friend goes away forever. (I might be the only person that makes friends in my dreams, so if that seems really weird to you, do me a favor and let me know so I can go get checked out or something ☺) So even in the off chance you luck out and get a decent dream, it’s a losing situation. The worst part is how hard it is to remember the good dreams, they just can’t hold a candle to their competitor, the nightmare.

Dreams are amazing, and I don’t hate them. I just wish that I could remember more of the good ones, less of the bad ones, and maybe one day even figure out what one of them is talking about.

Wednesday: I hate "Christian" T-shirts

It’s hard to describe how much these shirts bug me.

First of all, I’m not really sure how effective T-shirts are at communicating the idea of Christianity. I mean, sure they could spark a conversation if the shirt is poignant enough. Most times though you just see these shirts worn by Christians in the middle of doing something stupid. Ok, maybe that’s an unfair generalization, but when you see someone wearing these shirts doing something good you don’t remember the shirt, you remember the action. When you see someone wearing this shirt doing something stupid, you remember that shirt and it just confirms all the beliefs you had about ‘how hypocritical those Christians are”. Because like it or not, posting a reminder on your chest about how different you are from them, and then proceeding to inevitably fail at consistently being remarkably different (and it will be inevitable, otherwise there is no need for God’s grace) doesn’t make a great witness.

Also, isn’t there some kind of copyright infringement going on here? Wouldn’t it be horrible as a company that makes Christian products to be dragged into court accused of stealing other people’s ideas for profit? I get it, the slogans or logos or whatever ARE different, but just slightly different. It’s still more than possible for Steve Jobs, or Rupert Murdoch (Apple, and Myspace respectively) to get upset about their brands being used in the same context as religion, and deciding to make things ugly. Why even risk it?

Finally, the shirts seem a bit half-hearted. Like someone wanted to be different, but not too different. Like they wanted to be secret different. If you’re going to be different go for it, make it memorable. Go with the shirt with an unmistakable image on it, or scripture, or anything other than something that basically amounts to lame camouflage for your beliefs.

I think possibly the shirts are really just a symptom of something that bugs me a lot when looking at churches and Christians today. They so badly want to try and integrate the “cool” things into church so that people will feel more comfortable. So they sell shirts that barely announce that the wearer is a Christian, they write books about how to find the Gospel when watching whatever the popular movie of the month is, and they decorate their churches with pictures like this and this. This goes against everything I've learned in business school, but I would suggest that we shouldn’t look to what’s going on in the world for how best to reach people. Because whatever is out in the world has failed them and maybe they finally realized that. They’re looking for something different, something original, the thing that they’ve been missing that explains everything. I just think when they finally get lead to it and it’s dressed up to look like a starbucks cup, well it’s a lot harder to take seriously.

Wednesday: I hate talking about money

Kind of crazy Huh? A business major, someone who supposedly will end up spending 8 hours of every day for the rest of their natural lives surrounded by the topic hates discussing money. By the way, what is an un-natural life? You always hear about people living the rest of their natural lives, but never the other side of that coin. Anyway back to reasons I hate talking about money.

There’s a ton of reasons really. I read that money is the most divisive topic in every relationship; it causes the most friction, and aggravation. Because 99% of the time that money comes up, a happy conversation does not ensue. I’ve never seen it do too much damage to anyone I’ve personally known thankfully. I do remember my parents talking about finances very sparingly in front of us kids when we were small. When they did “discuss” money though it never really sounded like a something they were thrilled to be talking about. Always a kind of helplessness about the situation this stupid thing called money had put them in. They always figured it out, but that really put a sour taste in my mouth about the subject.

Also, money kind of drives me nuts on a more psychological level. It’s the quantification of all my time, effort, and knowledge. The worst is when you start to measure your purchases or bills in relation to your time like “oh man that trip to Target just cost me 4 hours of my life” (to explain, if you make $8/hr and spend $32 bucks on a trip to Target, you just spent 4 hours at Target, hours you’ll never, ever get back. I hope those picture frames were worth it.) So I’ll start thinking this way, and I start looking at things with this concept in mind, and to make it worse I have the realization that for other people it's possible it costs even more. Dinner might be 1 hour to me, but it might be 3 hours to you, or possibly vice versa. It makes me realize that to ask a friend to a movie or lunch I’m really asking that friend to spend 2 hours of their life doing some menial task, so that they can spend a couple hours with me watching that movie or catching lunch. That kills me.

Suffice to say, it’s a troublemaker. Obviously the bible warns about it numerous times, (Pro 11:28, Heb 13:5, Eccl 5:10 et al). So it doesn’t sound like it’s a bad thing that I don’t really enjoy talking about it. Except, I hate it so much I will ignore the subject completely at times. That, I think is the reason I wanted to become a business man, or at least get a handle on the business thing. Ignorance is a huge step towards fear, and fear as we all know leads to anger. I’m not really a fan of anger, so hopefully this college thing will help out with the ignorance piece. I wanted to be able to take care of this problem early on for myself and hopefully other people to the point where the subject is assigned the meaningless-ness it should be.