I don't think there is one among us humans who has not benefited from being told of, or who hasn't stumbled across a technique or process or a trick that makes life simpler. Sometimes it's an evolution of steps in an activity that we tend to pare down into a more streamlined way, only to be shocked some time later when reminded of how we used to do it. Other times it's a sudden realization that we could do a task in a totally different way that shaves time or effort from our day. Or sometimes it's much, much bigger than that.
In a series of posts — because I think one post to cover all of them would just be too long ...like that ever stopped me before — I will highlight the things I have discovered on my own which have made life better.
A Life Experiment, Perhaps
It has been a couple years since I wrote The Power of the Smile, and a couple more years since I began applying that of which I wrote, and I want to present an update. Go ahead and read The Power of the Smile again (come on! I linked it twice!) and then come back here to finish. I'll be brief. I promise. Go. I'll wait.
Welcome Back
Life will always have its ups and downs. Setbacks. Triumphs. Love. Loss. Two years ago I waxed romantic about smiling and finding love and, well, that romance was brief. Though I couldn't keep the girl, I kept the smile and, I must say, my words then still ring true today. Plastering a smile on my face daily no matter in what mood I awake really is the key to smoothing out the day. I have changed jobs since I wrote about smiles, and my daily work stress is probably greater than it was as a valet manager, and I still grumble when things don't run smoothly or when the crap seems to pile on more quickly than I can shovel. But now I take several moments a day to step back from it, look at myself, and smile. It's absurd. It's not brain surgery. It's the stuff of sitcoms. And I laugh.
The practice of smiling truly has changed my life for the better. I feel happier even though the circumstances of my life have not greatly improved. Moments of inevitable anger or frustration at the obstacles in my life don't last nearly as long as they used to. I have learned not to dwell on them. I have learned to smile. If smile dopamine is pumping through my body, anger mojo can't take hold.
It's the easiest self-help in the world: Just. Smile.
# # #
Thursday, August 24, 2017
Saturday, August 12, 2017
Life, Simplified - Part 3: Within the Circle
I don't think there is one among us humans who has not benefited from being told of, or who hasn't stumbled across a technique or process or a trick that makes life simpler. Sometimes it's an evolution of steps in an activity that we tend to pare down into a more streamlined way, only to be shocked some time later when reminded of how we used to do it. Other times it's a sudden realization that we could do a task in a totally different way that shaves time or effort from our day. Or sometimes it's much, much bigger than that.
In a series of posts — because I think one post to cover all of them would just be too long ...like that ever stopped me before — I will highlight the things I have discovered on my own which have made life better.
Have a seat. Ease your mind.
Women haven't had to figure this one out....
For about 46 of my 53 years roaming the planet, I had made life more difficult for myself than it had to be. Like most healthy, able men, I had followed the male social norm of peeing while standing up. It's easy, our underwear is designed for it: just open the flap, whip it out, and let it flow.
However, also like most men, I have terrible aim. And really, it's not so much about the aim, but more about the starting and the stopping. What with an eager surge at the beginning and a dribbling finish, we sometimes (usually) miss the bowl and manage to hit the rim. Or the floor. Or the wall.
I got tired of feeling the impulse to wipe the rim clean with toilet paper, often ignoring said impulse, and subsequently got tired of seeing the dried, yellow stains clinging there later in the day ...or week. Yes, I'm also lazy.
So, one day, in an amazing moment of brilliance, I wondered, "How could I make it so I don't have to clean my toilet so frequently?"
A strange voice, unfamiliar to me in the dark, echoing chasm that is my mind, the voice that is rational, pragmatic reasoning, replied, "Stop peeing on the rim, idiot." My rational, pragmatic reasoning voice doesn't think very highly of me.
"But how do I do that?"
"By placing the source of the stream below the rim, you moron!"
Of course! The pee can't get on the rim if it's never above the rim! That's pure genius! ...or common sense. I often confuse the two.
And so, about three years ago or so, I started sitting down on the toilet to pee. I haven't cleaned my toilet since!
I'M KIDDING!
But it has made my life remarkably better. I'm not having to clean my toilet as often, nor feeling guilty for letting so much time slip in between cleanings. And it's better for my friends because I sit down to pee in their bathrooms, as well. My aim is no better there than at home!
Guys, it doesn't make you any less a man to pee sitting down. Do it. Your girlfriend will appreciate it. Your wife will love you more for it. You'll love yourself for it. Your buddies will... well, they'll probably bust your balls for it publicly, but then they'll go home, look at their disgusting toilets, and realize you really are the genius in their circle!
Really. It will make your life better. It certainly did mine!
# # #
In a series of posts — because I think one post to cover all of them would just be too long ...like that ever stopped me before — I will highlight the things I have discovered on my own which have made life better.
Have a seat. Ease your mind.
Women haven't had to figure this one out....
For about 46 of my 53 years roaming the planet, I had made life more difficult for myself than it had to be. Like most healthy, able men, I had followed the male social norm of peeing while standing up. It's easy, our underwear is designed for it: just open the flap, whip it out, and let it flow.
However, also like most men, I have terrible aim. And really, it's not so much about the aim, but more about the starting and the stopping. What with an eager surge at the beginning and a dribbling finish, we sometimes (usually) miss the bowl and manage to hit the rim. Or the floor. Or the wall.
I got tired of feeling the impulse to wipe the rim clean with toilet paper, often ignoring said impulse, and subsequently got tired of seeing the dried, yellow stains clinging there later in the day ...or week. Yes, I'm also lazy.
So, one day, in an amazing moment of brilliance, I wondered, "How could I make it so I don't have to clean my toilet so frequently?"
A strange voice, unfamiliar to me in the dark, echoing chasm that is my mind, the voice that is rational, pragmatic reasoning, replied, "Stop peeing on the rim, idiot." My rational, pragmatic reasoning voice doesn't think very highly of me.
"But how do I do that?"
"By placing the source of the stream below the rim, you moron!"
Of course! The pee can't get on the rim if it's never above the rim! That's pure genius! ...or common sense. I often confuse the two.
And so, about three years ago or so, I started sitting down on the toilet to pee. I haven't cleaned my toilet since!
I'M KIDDING!
But it has made my life remarkably better. I'm not having to clean my toilet as often, nor feeling guilty for letting so much time slip in between cleanings. And it's better for my friends because I sit down to pee in their bathrooms, as well. My aim is no better there than at home!
Guys, it doesn't make you any less a man to pee sitting down. Do it. Your girlfriend will appreciate it. Your wife will love you more for it. You'll love yourself for it. Your buddies will... well, they'll probably bust your balls for it publicly, but then they'll go home, look at their disgusting toilets, and realize you really are the genius in their circle!
Really. It will make your life better. It certainly did mine!
# # #
Monday, August 07, 2017
Life, Simplified - Part 2: Go Juice
I don't think there is one among us humans who has not benefited from being told of, or who hasn't stumbled across a technique or process or a trick that makes life simpler. Sometimes it's an evolution of steps in an activity that we tend to pare down into a more streamlined way, only to be shocked some time later when reminded of how we used to do it. Other times it's a sudden realization that we could do a task in a totally different way that shaves time or effort from our day. Or sometimes it's much, much bigger than that.
In a series of posts — because I think one post to cover all of them would just be too long ...like that ever stopped me before — I will highlight the things I have discovered on my own which have made life better.
With a V8, You Can Really GO!
Back in the aught decade, when Oprah! was still on the air, the Chicago affiliate ran it twice a day: once in daytime, and then again at night after the local news. I was still married then, and we would lie in bed and watch Oprah! 'til we crashed, or until Nightline came on. On one particular Oprah! in 2005 or 2006 she featured one of her regular visitors, then up-and-coming daytime talk TV superstar, Dr. Oz. He came on and made the audience squirm by talking about things we are too embarrassed to talk about to our doctors, one of them being our poop.
I'll warn you right now, this post will briefly get a bit graphic, so you may wish to skip to the end and work your way back....
Dr. Oz talked about how some patients had asked him how their poop should be, what it should look like. He said that it shouldn't be hard nuggets, nor should it be really soft or semi-liquid. What it should look like, he said, is a semi-firm, long, unbroken, S-shaped poop. To my relief, he didn't show photos. And to yours, neither will I.
But I lay there thinking, "Mine aren't like that. They vary wildly from one far end of that spectrum to the other and back." He babbled on about the way to achieve the S-shaped poop, but it all sounded like much effort, and I fell asleep.
Flash forward to 2009, and my earnest effort to lose some weight and get into shape. I hired a personal trainer who tasked me with keeping a journal of my diet. Of course, he gave me guidance along the way, with a focus on balancing the food groups and cutting out the sugary and high-carb things. What I had not been eating with any kind of regularity prior to his influence was vegetables, but he changed that with a stern expression and some kindly advice. Soon I was eating vegetables in two meals daily.
And, before I realized it, I was making two poops daily that were perfect Dr. Oz S-shaped poops. So easy, and so regular! Dr. Oz was right — as were about a billion other doctors! A healthy diet is key!
But, after a while, I hit a wall vegetable-wise; there were (are) only so many vegetables I like or know how to cook, and it had become expensive since the portions on offer at the grocery stores always seemed to be more than I could eat in a week — especially if I was trying to vary the menu — and I was losing a lot of vegetables to mold and decay in the refrigerator. I had to find an alternative.
After reading lots of labels in grocery store aisles, I finally decided on the low sodium version of V8 Juice. Each bottle is a cocktail made of eight different vegetables (in case you didn't know why they call it V8), and the ingredients list — at least for a major brand — is pretty brief. There is some added citric acid, "natural flavoring," and potassium chloride, but they make up less than two percent of the whole. So I switched completely over from buying and storing and cooking and eating vegetables to having an eight ounce glass of V8 juice with every meal.
My body didn't miss a beat. I still squeezed out those S-shaped poops!
I included V8 in my daily food journals, and my personal trainer said nothing about it until I asked him. Though he said he would prefer if I cooked and ate vegetables, he had nothing bad to say about substituting low sodium V8 for vegetables on my plate.
So, eight years later, though I've fallen off the workout wagon, I still suck down a glass of V8 with dinner. It never gets old. I never get tired of it. ...or of easy poops! Sometimes I forget, and sometimes I'll go out for dinner that is light on the vegetables, to an almost immediate and uncomfortable result in the bathroom. However, it takes only about three days back on the V8 regimen to get me back in that groove.
I suppose, with all the money I've thrown in to V8 in all that time, I should buy stock in Campbell's or General Motors or whoever it is that makes the V8. It has certainly simplified my life and it makes my life better.
# # #
In a series of posts — because I think one post to cover all of them would just be too long ...like that ever stopped me before — I will highlight the things I have discovered on my own which have made life better.
With a V8, You Can Really GO!
Back in the aught decade, when Oprah! was still on the air, the Chicago affiliate ran it twice a day: once in daytime, and then again at night after the local news. I was still married then, and we would lie in bed and watch Oprah! 'til we crashed, or until Nightline came on. On one particular Oprah! in 2005 or 2006 she featured one of her regular visitors, then up-and-coming daytime talk TV superstar, Dr. Oz. He came on and made the audience squirm by talking about things we are too embarrassed to talk about to our doctors, one of them being our poop.
I'll warn you right now, this post will briefly get a bit graphic, so you may wish to skip to the end and work your way back....
Dr. Oz talked about how some patients had asked him how their poop should be, what it should look like. He said that it shouldn't be hard nuggets, nor should it be really soft or semi-liquid. What it should look like, he said, is a semi-firm, long, unbroken, S-shaped poop. To my relief, he didn't show photos. And to yours, neither will I.
But I lay there thinking, "Mine aren't like that. They vary wildly from one far end of that spectrum to the other and back." He babbled on about the way to achieve the S-shaped poop, but it all sounded like much effort, and I fell asleep.
Flash forward to 2009, and my earnest effort to lose some weight and get into shape. I hired a personal trainer who tasked me with keeping a journal of my diet. Of course, he gave me guidance along the way, with a focus on balancing the food groups and cutting out the sugary and high-carb things. What I had not been eating with any kind of regularity prior to his influence was vegetables, but he changed that with a stern expression and some kindly advice. Soon I was eating vegetables in two meals daily.
And, before I realized it, I was making two poops daily that were perfect Dr. Oz S-shaped poops. So easy, and so regular! Dr. Oz was right — as were about a billion other doctors! A healthy diet is key!
But, after a while, I hit a wall vegetable-wise; there were (are) only so many vegetables I like or know how to cook, and it had become expensive since the portions on offer at the grocery stores always seemed to be more than I could eat in a week — especially if I was trying to vary the menu — and I was losing a lot of vegetables to mold and decay in the refrigerator. I had to find an alternative.
After reading lots of labels in grocery store aisles, I finally decided on the low sodium version of V8 Juice. Each bottle is a cocktail made of eight different vegetables (in case you didn't know why they call it V8), and the ingredients list — at least for a major brand — is pretty brief. There is some added citric acid, "natural flavoring," and potassium chloride, but they make up less than two percent of the whole. So I switched completely over from buying and storing and cooking and eating vegetables to having an eight ounce glass of V8 juice with every meal.
My body didn't miss a beat. I still squeezed out those S-shaped poops!
I included V8 in my daily food journals, and my personal trainer said nothing about it until I asked him. Though he said he would prefer if I cooked and ate vegetables, he had nothing bad to say about substituting low sodium V8 for vegetables on my plate.
So, eight years later, though I've fallen off the workout wagon, I still suck down a glass of V8 with dinner. It never gets old. I never get tired of it. ...or of easy poops! Sometimes I forget, and sometimes I'll go out for dinner that is light on the vegetables, to an almost immediate and uncomfortable result in the bathroom. However, it takes only about three days back on the V8 regimen to get me back in that groove.
I suppose, with all the money I've thrown in to V8 in all that time, I should buy stock in Campbell's or General Motors or whoever it is that makes the V8. It has certainly simplified my life and it makes my life better.
# # #
Sunday, August 06, 2017
Life, Simplified - Part 1: Let It Go
I don't think there is one among us humans who has not benefited from being told of, or who hasn't stumbled across a technique or process or a trick that makes life simpler. Sometimes it's an evolution of steps in an activity that we tend to pare down into a more streamlined way, only to be shocked some time later when reminded of how we used to do it. Other times it's a sudden realization that we could do a task in a totally different way that shaves time or effort from our day. Or sometimes it's much, much bigger than that.
In a series of posts — because I think one post to cover all of them would just be too long ...like that ever stopped me before — I will highlight the things I have discovered on my own which have made life better.
When It's Gone, Let It Go
From the moment I separated from the Air Force, I pursued a career in broadcasting and video production: earned my degree in Radio/TV at Southern Illinois University; two years later accepted my first career job at a very small-market TV station in southern Illinois (a stepping stone to fame and fortune); two years later jumped half a country away to a job at a TV station in Georgia; then to a cable outlet in the same town; then back to Chicago. In all, I spent 16 years in the industry.
It was perhaps two years or so into that career when I discovered I wanted to write. I was writing in my job(s) — a lot. As a matter of fact, the writing I did at work — scripts, mainly, for local advertisers' commercials — sucked up all my creative energy, so when I got home, all desire to write what I wanted to write was gone.
Flash forward to 2003 or so, and I had landed what was, for me at the time, a dream job: video production with extensive travel. While I was interested in the travel aspect mostly for the opportunity to see bits of the world, it was in 2003 that I capitalized on the hours of idle time on airplanes and started writing down the stories for which I had only previously scribbled notes. I felt like I was actually getting somewhere with my ideas! On top of that, I was still dreaming of the big time in video production while pitying the poor nine-to-fivers who went to the same job in the same place every day forever.
It all came crashing to a halt in April, 2009, when, due probably as much to my own pride as to the flattened economy, I was shit-canned from my "dream job."
I spent the next three years or so knocking on that career door which had been so unceremoniously shut. There were a few freelance gigs with the former employer, a few gigs picked up through a small network of similarly skilled folks, but in a glutted market that had gone stagnant, I wasn't making enough to support myself. But I was working, having entered the occupation of taxi driver. It was a new experience, being self-employed and building a client base and covering my responsibilities, but after a while I realized that taxi ownership was eating me alive — financially as well as psychologically. The hours were insane: 14-hour days, six days a week, just to make ends meet ...and I wasn't exactly making those ends meet. My debt was growing. I found myself longing to get out, even being happy with the thought of the daily nine-to-five in the same job in the same place every day forever.
But during this same period, I was writing — more so at the beginning. I had lost the momentum on the older ideas I had started, but was cultivating new ideas. I was creating! And I had made the realization that I could return to acting, my other passion, which had lain dormant for more than a decade. It became my primary creative outlet, and my writing tapered off to a trickle.
Still, in this period is when it hit me: I was doing things I wanted to do! It wasn't the career I had chosen that was fulfilling me, but it was in indulging my passions. My career leaving me opened my eyes to the reality that I had been living to work when it should have been the other way around. All those poor nine-to-five saps had been doing it right all along!
So I stopped letting my career drag me along, digging my heels into the earth, hoping for it to let me back in. I just let it go, stood on my own two feet, and watched it shrink to a dot on the horizon.
It took a couple of years. I had to get out of the taxi, so I took whatever I could get. It had been five years since the layoff; the economy had turned back around and was improving. Jobs were to be had once again. There was a false start with a photography company, then two years in a tenuous existence with a valet company who provided shitty pay and no benefits before I landed the perfect, mindless, benefits-rich, nine-to-five existence that leaves me time to my passions.
It has been a slow, grinding re-start to get my writing rolling, but it's coming along. I recently put about a week's worth into a screenplay idea I had a decade ago. I've joined a Facebook writers' group and have already submitted two-thousand words to participate in their challenges. I feel like the Tin Man in the land of Oz whose creaky joints need a little bit of oil, but then he's soon whooping it up with a scarecrow and a lion.
The new job doesn't pay a great deal more than the old, and doesn't make life much easier, but my new outlook makes living with myself much easier. And that makes life much better.
# # #
In a series of posts — because I think one post to cover all of them would just be too long ...like that ever stopped me before — I will highlight the things I have discovered on my own which have made life better.
When It's Gone, Let It Go
From the moment I separated from the Air Force, I pursued a career in broadcasting and video production: earned my degree in Radio/TV at Southern Illinois University; two years later accepted my first career job at a very small-market TV station in southern Illinois (a stepping stone to fame and fortune); two years later jumped half a country away to a job at a TV station in Georgia; then to a cable outlet in the same town; then back to Chicago. In all, I spent 16 years in the industry.
It was perhaps two years or so into that career when I discovered I wanted to write. I was writing in my job(s) — a lot. As a matter of fact, the writing I did at work — scripts, mainly, for local advertisers' commercials — sucked up all my creative energy, so when I got home, all desire to write what I wanted to write was gone.
Flash forward to 2003 or so, and I had landed what was, for me at the time, a dream job: video production with extensive travel. While I was interested in the travel aspect mostly for the opportunity to see bits of the world, it was in 2003 that I capitalized on the hours of idle time on airplanes and started writing down the stories for which I had only previously scribbled notes. I felt like I was actually getting somewhere with my ideas! On top of that, I was still dreaming of the big time in video production while pitying the poor nine-to-fivers who went to the same job in the same place every day forever.
It all came crashing to a halt in April, 2009, when, due probably as much to my own pride as to the flattened economy, I was shit-canned from my "dream job."
I spent the next three years or so knocking on that career door which had been so unceremoniously shut. There were a few freelance gigs with the former employer, a few gigs picked up through a small network of similarly skilled folks, but in a glutted market that had gone stagnant, I wasn't making enough to support myself. But I was working, having entered the occupation of taxi driver. It was a new experience, being self-employed and building a client base and covering my responsibilities, but after a while I realized that taxi ownership was eating me alive — financially as well as psychologically. The hours were insane: 14-hour days, six days a week, just to make ends meet ...and I wasn't exactly making those ends meet. My debt was growing. I found myself longing to get out, even being happy with the thought of the daily nine-to-five in the same job in the same place every day forever.
But during this same period, I was writing — more so at the beginning. I had lost the momentum on the older ideas I had started, but was cultivating new ideas. I was creating! And I had made the realization that I could return to acting, my other passion, which had lain dormant for more than a decade. It became my primary creative outlet, and my writing tapered off to a trickle.
Still, in this period is when it hit me: I was doing things I wanted to do! It wasn't the career I had chosen that was fulfilling me, but it was in indulging my passions. My career leaving me opened my eyes to the reality that I had been living to work when it should have been the other way around. All those poor nine-to-five saps had been doing it right all along!
So I stopped letting my career drag me along, digging my heels into the earth, hoping for it to let me back in. I just let it go, stood on my own two feet, and watched it shrink to a dot on the horizon.
It took a couple of years. I had to get out of the taxi, so I took whatever I could get. It had been five years since the layoff; the economy had turned back around and was improving. Jobs were to be had once again. There was a false start with a photography company, then two years in a tenuous existence with a valet company who provided shitty pay and no benefits before I landed the perfect, mindless, benefits-rich, nine-to-five existence that leaves me time to my passions.
It has been a slow, grinding re-start to get my writing rolling, but it's coming along. I recently put about a week's worth into a screenplay idea I had a decade ago. I've joined a Facebook writers' group and have already submitted two-thousand words to participate in their challenges. I feel like the Tin Man in the land of Oz whose creaky joints need a little bit of oil, but then he's soon whooping it up with a scarecrow and a lion.
The new job doesn't pay a great deal more than the old, and doesn't make life much easier, but my new outlook makes living with myself much easier. And that makes life much better.
# # #
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)