Dec 19 Everyone has to perform menial tasks. Well I guess not everyone, but those of us who actually have to clean our own house, iron our own clothes, and wash our own dishes do. They’re not fun. That’s why they’re deemed menial tasks! But for myself, I’ve found that music is making them much more tolerable.
I think that I was finding that having these tasks to do (not necessarily everyday, but very often) was causing me to start doing them rather begrudgingly. It’s not that I hate the idea of doing work, but I just don’t like having multiple completely lacking in fun tasks queued up for me to do. They’re often monotonous and sometimes even physically tiring! Nobody considers them fun. But there’s hope!
Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
-Berthold Auerbach
People have known for so long that music speaks to us in ways that are indescribable. And I’ve found that simply listening to music while performing tasks that I would not otherwise prefer to do makes them all the more bearable. Now whether that’s because I can dance around, hum, or bob my head, who’s to say? All I know is that it’s there, and it’s good.
From John Mayer to DJ Maj to Al Green to Frank Sinatra to Deitrick Haddon & Unity Praise to Norah Jones to Bleach, and so on and so forth, I like me some music. No point in letting those 100s of CDs worth of music stay silenced.
Dec 12 Don’t you hate the feeling that you get right after you realize that you’ve been caught doing something that you didn’t want to do? It’s that feeling where your blood runs cold for a second. Yeah, I don’t like it either.
Even if it’s something pretty innocuous and unimportant, I think that that I can definitely still get that feeling. And that is no good at all. But at least it teaches us that we should just not be doing whatever we’re doing in the first place.
Then you go through the progression of
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I am so embarrassed/ashamed.
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I cannot believe that I did that.
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I hate myself for doing that.
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I am resolved to never ever do that again.
Dec 11 Have you ever thought about how life can be different? Well the other day I was thinking about what our world would be like without our friend fire. And a very different world it would be.
It sure would be cold. Haha and Bear Grylls wouldn’t be able to teach us that fire is so important to survive in the wild. Hopefully he would still eat crazy things on his show, though.
But once you get past the fact that we’d all be shivering perhaps you think that it wouldn’t be so bad because we could have electricity to warm us. Electric heaters are all over the place, and they certainly do not require fire. So we wouldn’t freeze to death and perhaps people could still live in Alaska.
However, there are many things that we would not have in our use. We wouldn’t be able to have:
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Cars - That sure would change our world, wouldn’t it? They’re currently needed because gasoline engines use sparks to create a small combustion that, through a series of gears and mechanical parts, powers the wheels. Granted I guess a spark isn’t exactly fire. However I’m assuming that we would have gotten nowhere close to a spark if we didn’t have fire.
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Food - How in the world would we cook it? Would we be eating lots and lots of sushi? Maybe just raw vegetables? How animalistic!
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Trains - Perhaps you don’t think that losing trains is any great loss. I mean who really rides trains nowadays anyways? Well lest you forget, trains still carry vast amounts of goods across land. They’re often supposed to be more efficient than trucks because of their fixed rail.
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Swords - How will the ninjas work? They’ll be put out of a job. But seriously, there would be no metallurgy as we know it because the metal needs to be shaped after being heated…by fire. So kiss your katana goodbye.
Fire has got to get a mention in the race for best creation ever. Without it we’d be a hungry bunch of people eating who knows what. And we’d all be biking everywhere. Well that would be a good thing because then we wouldn’t be obese. But everyone would be walking around sweaty and smelly. And to add insult to injury, everything metal would be ugly and rough. Put a chunk of that in your ear and see how you like it. Makes one a little more thankful for the things that we take for granted, does it not? Still it’s kind of fun to have an imagination!
Dec 3 Friends are such an integral part of life. They are there for us to have fun, to share with, and to truly live our lives with. And, just as in many of our relationships in life, they can be a source of pain. I’m not necessarily saying that I feel that right now, but that doesn’t discount the truth in the statement, does it?
People have a tendency to let relationships deteriorate. It takes constant effort and a willing heart to maintain those relationships that might otherwise fall by the way side. Being a couple of years out of college I can so easily see how much my friendships and relationships with a lot of my friends has done so. It’s on the one hand tragic but on the other hand just a fact of life.
Wow I really was thinking that I need some lighter-hearted posts. Oh well.
So here’s my quote, tell me what you think.
True friends do not prove themselves in the exciting moments of life. Hardships and joyous occasions are not where they’re found.
No, the proving ground of a true friend is in the mundane and dull moments of the everyday life. -Derek Wong
Well I’ve actually thought about this before, but I had never gotten around to find out whether or not someone else has said it before I have. As usual, someone probably did. But it’d take too long to try to find and properly give them credit. So if someone else happens upon it, I’ll gladly give someone else the credit.
Basically all I mean is that it’s so easy to feel close to people when they’re going through things that are interesting. But life consists of only a few of those moments. It’s so much nicer to have friends and people around you that actually want to hear about the days when life isn’t as exciting or exceptionally interesting. I feel like I’ve said that before, but it must have been in conversation rather than on my blog. Granted it’s even better to just be interesting all of the time, but I digress.
Nov 26 Sometimes we have to choose our poison, don’t we? It’s not always blue pill or red pill, sometimes it’s bad and worse. In any case, I feel like I must have heard this quote, but I can’t seem to find its source online. I think that it’s pretty good, what do you think?
Regret is 10 times worse than rejection. -Derek Wong
For some reason in my head the quote actually is “100 times,” but I think that’s an exaggeration. I’m more comfortable with 10 times. So if nobody has made this quote, and I actually did make up this quote then that’s just fine with me. And if someone did say this, let me know so that I can give due credit.
I’d venture to guess that many people choose regret simply because it is the easier of the two. Rejection is a pain that we all know and despise. It hurts us upfront and in the short term quite a lot. On the other hand regret takes some time to fester and build up its power. And it’s a longer term pain to boot. No thanks.