Happy Fun Cog

I can't stop looking fantasy (American) football league, in terms of looking at my roster, looking at the rosters of the other people in the team, poking around there and there, etc. This is the first year I've played and I'm doing rather well. I should point out by way of disclaimer that, in the player draft (a turn-based process at the beginning season in which people choose the players they want on their team), I used the automated draft; the fantasy football software, run by Yahoo, did most of my picking for me. I picked my first two or three players, but everything else was done automatically.

That being said, I'm second in the league, #2 out of 10. I've made some bad moves, including one horrible trade in which a much more knowledgeable person (I know all the people in the league from work or softball) got me to trade away one of my best players for a pittance. That being said, I've been doing some research and have done some things the right way which definitely contributed to my success.

But now I can't stop looking at the stuff. I check it multiple times a day, even when there's nothing to do. My roster is set for the next round of games. I just look at it. I don't know why. Granted, I'm always looking for something random to focus on in order to take my attention away from what's causing me stress, whether it's work or personal life or whatever. This is especially potent, though, and incredibly ridiculous. Last week, I had no choices in what players to play because a lot of my players had an off day. So I had no choices to make, nothing to research. But I still kept looking.

I gave up drinking Diet Coke several months ago. I love Diet Coke, but for some reason it started making me feel gassy and bloated. Plus, I was farting a lot. So, I quit Diet Coke, and the gas problems went away quickly.

Over time, I forgot why it was exactly that I quit drinking it. Or rather, I remembered, but dismissed it because I could drink a Diet Coke without getting gassy. So, I did the smart thing and went on a binge, drinking Diet Coke every day for the past few weeks, drinking probably half a litre on any given Saturday or Sunday (not so much during the week). Well, now the farts are back and I'm forced to admit that I knew this problem would happen but I drank the stuff anyway and now I'm farting like there's no tomorrow. So I have to quit again. What a pain in the ass.

Many of the posts in this blog reflect my back-and-forth with emotional or mental things I'm working through, often at the risk of overthinking or revisiting emotional experiences that would probably be best left in the past. These are usually very subjective writings that are specific to a time and place in my life.

This is not one of those posts. Today, while preparing dinner (well, two dinners that I have since refrigerated and will feed from for the rest of the week), I opened a number of aluminum cans and, when they were empty, tossed them in the sink with the vegetable shavings and slicings so that they could be tossed as part of my overall cleanup after the meal.

I sliced the living shit out of my thumb on the jagged edge of one of those cans because I didn't see it through the rest of the mess. I soaked 3 band-aids through with blood. The fourth one seems to be holding its ground. The moral of the story, dear reader, is that, if you're not going to toss an empty food can right when you're finished with it, keep it out in the open so you don't accidentally cut yourself.

Gentlemen,

Thank you for your time. This is not really a subject of great interest to me, but if we're going to keep having this conversation on a regular basis, I thought I'd be proactive about it and address the main points so we could spare each other some time.

• Yes, I am aware that the Sunday New York Times costs $6.
• Yes, I am aware that $6 is a lot of money to spend on a newspaper.
• Yes, I am aware that I can buy the Sunday Metrowest Daily News, a paper that is also big and thick, for a significantly smaller amount of money.
• No, you do not need to hold that expression of disbelief and disdain on your face for the entire length of our transaction in order for me to understand that you think it's stupid for someone to spend so much money on a newspaper when a much cheaper newspaper is available.
• No, I am not interested in any thoughts on our nation's economy that you might be inspired to espouse after selling someone a newspaper for $6.
• Yes, I do think I'm smarter than you.
  

Thank you.

There are few things, both in life and in martial arts, as simple as a punch. But "simple" does not mean "easy." In fact, I think the simple things are often the hardest simply because we impose complexities on everything by the very nature of how we look at the world. So things or situations that are complicated are often, at least for me, easier to grasp because they are inherently more in sync with the reflexive perspective of every day life.

I was at tae kwon do earlier this week and the class was smaller than expected, so the instructor decided to have us work on some more basic techniques. He turned to punching and, specifically, how to punch with power. Power, in terms of the force you a) generate through the natural physics of your body movement and b) how and where you focus it, is one of the primary interests of the tae kwon do master who founded the school (which is part of a local chain). As such, it's a topic that the instructors at the individual schools often revisit.

The instructor, who is very good at what he does, just came over from Korea. He isn't fluent in English and so relies a good deal on miming. At one point in the discussion of punching, he let his eyes droop and his face go slack and he threw a few sloppy, listless punches.

"This is not tae kwon do," he said.

He then snapped off a few, powerful punches, and looked at me and the other two guys in the class.

"This is tae kwon do."

He reverted to his slack face and listless punching.

"Sometimes, people come in, and they are like this. They are tired from work. But this is not how you learn. This is not tae kwon do."

And this is the point in the post where I tie an individual experience to some sort of larger scheme or motif. I know you, dear reader, are very excited about this upcoming event.

So here it is: what the instructor said about focus, specifically about how you need to bring focus to every day in order to really learn and really get good at something, is applicable to work, to dating, to interacting with other people, to cleaning one's apartment or house, whatever. I think it's impossible for most people to maintain that focus every day. Hell, I have a problem just maintaining focus for 30 minutes. But what we can do is make an effort to stop sleepwalking through every day. No, not "we." "Me."

I've been refocusing on my job after years of burnout and cruise control, and good lord I am exhausted by the end of the day. It sounds like an obvious point, but I'd totally forgotten what it's like to try to stay engaged with things until the end of the day.