Things on my gruntling list, making me the gruntliest right now:
- Having someone else do my book-keeping and taxes. I want to be a better dad, and I don’t think being better at book-keeping will help me reach that goal in the short term.
- Never Mind the Buzzcocks. It’s got Noel Fielding in it for goodness sake. He of the Boosh with a grinning face that he himself describes as a skateboard with a wig. Music, being mean to people and comedy. My cup of tea indeed. Spending time in England has reminded me that being excessively mean in a jocular fashion is just the way we get through the day. Maybe I know too many salespeople and positive thinking entrepreneurs in Texas. As the Black Eyed Peas ask, “Where is the love?”, I’m thinking to myself, “Where is the bilious spleen people?”
- Chocolate bars and sugar rushes. I realized today that I enjoy eating a Snickers more than I enjoy having a low body fat content. Don’t get my bile flowing on the topic of the poor quality of local (national) chocolate bars, I’ll resort to caning pure sugar if I have to Cheer up Charlie on this side of the pond.
- PDQ Automotive who have been telling me which cars not to buy as I’ve wheeled them in front of them. They do it cheerfully and for nothing as I’m a past (and clearly a future) customer. And they have cool accents.
- Star Wars Imperial Academy which is such a great time waster. I say time waster as if playing a red queen game of buying guns and armor and running around on Tatooine is not a productive way to stay up too late and isolate yourself from your partner while lying in bed at bedtime-thirty. I learned through a long-term Tetris rivalry that I actually can only really think about deeper issues in a focused way when I occupy my flitting mind with repetitive tasks like shooting stormtroopers and stacking blocks. It’s a kind of meditation, which shows how much I know about that practice. Instead of emptying your mind to find peace, you cram it so full to bursting with one particular thing that you can’t think of anything. You fill your mind with emptiness, I empty mine with fullness. Same, same but different, as the Thais put it.
- Striving for freedom over comfort. Sure, I’m spending hard earned cash on mini-vans, but I’m also thinking more about freedom of time and earning my way without giving up the things that matter to me. Which according to this list are TV watching and iPhone games. Whereas if you take random snapshots of my life at other times, I could be claiming that I like knife fights and smoking crack
- Spending time with people I like. Another realization I’ve had since my return is that despite my protests that I’m neither overly fond of people nor things, that I actually look forward to, reminisce about and enjoy time spent with friends. This whole working alone from home thing is really enough to drive a man to ruin. Or at least to checking his email all the time.
- Drinking beer and eating Pringles. I know that I scoff at such practices when I’m running and cycling and jazzercizing my way to a Kale salad. I know. But dagnabbit. Salt and vinegar crisps and lager go together like pork pies and cocaine. No wait, better than that. Like yoga and vegetables.
- Writing gibberish. Now clearly I’m being on the level here. Have you seen the link-density in this post? I’m clearly not doing this for google, I’m doing it for little old me. The Englishman who went up a hill and stopped at the petrol station for a creme egg and a tube of rolos.
There endeth the list. Now go and gorge before the end of days. You can’t take it with you unless you eat it.