life lessons

This is going to sound painfully obvious. It is very obvious but I fell into this trap at home. I was watching a productivity video and it flipped on the light bulb for me.

Would you like to know what it was?

Well, I’ll tell you anyway.

Certain things belong in certain spaces. I did an audit of my office and wow, just wow!

You would not believe the amount of crap I moved out of the office so it could be placed where it actually “should” be.

Coffee products = kitchen.

Bedroom products = bedroom.

Basement things = basement.

I had a lot of things in places where they shouldn’t have been.

My office looks better as a result.

Note: The picture is not my office. It comes from here.

How to know you’ve completely lost your mind.

When you are attempting to please yourself sexually and you utter the words “you’re doing it wrong.”

These are just a few things that I’ve done on the other side of 50 that some may consider weird. When I say weird, I mean weird from the perspective of a younger age group. I remember what it was like when I was 35 and how I thought old people did weird shit. Well, as it turns out, they actually DO weird shit.

I’ll give you some examples below.

1. They make noises when they do most everything. Ever listen to an old man pee at a urinal next to you at a bar, restaurant, or other venue? They are making noises. You may hear things like “Ahhhh” and “Oh, yeah.”

2. They don’t give a fuck. When we are younger, we are so self absorbed that we don’t see the rest of the world around us. Older people are over that. They don’t care what you think. They don’t care what you think about anything. Why? That thing you are doing? Living your life at 35. Yeah, they’ve already done that. It is like young mothers giving advice. Well, young mothers let me give you some advice. Shut the fuck up. There is nothing you are going through that someone else already hasn’t. Not one fucking thing. Shut your pie hole. Don’t give a fuck.

3. Nudity. Here is another area where older people just don’t give a fuck. We laugh at the old guy that walks out to get his paper nude. “He’s forgotten to put his clothes on,” People might say. They would be wrong. That old guy just doesn’t give a fuck if you are offended or not. If they are a nudist, it can be even worse. Try getting them to put clothes on. Go ahead. I dare you.

4. Driving. I realized a long time ago that I needed to stop driving. I just knew. I have no regrets. I don’t go out much so I don’t care. If I really need to travel somewhere, I have other options. One thing I am not doing. I’m not spending all of the money on it. I’d rather buy a new MacBook Pro.

5. Sex. I stopped caring about this one a long time ago. If you are worried that I am eyeing you up and down because I want to have sex with you, wow. You couldn’t be more wrong. I’m probably just admiring your beauty. Believe me. It does happen. Some men can look at another woman without the idea of sex ever popping into their minds.

I think these five are a good start. I’ll probably add more later.

Distractions are the mother of everything wrong in the world. I just took a quick course on LinkedIn Learning about this very topic.

At my age, I’ve seen a lot of things and I’ve read countless self help books. The material in the course wasn’t necessarily new but I like that it sparked some ideas and reignited thinking and patterns associated to why we get so damn distracted.

Email is always the 900 pound gorilla in the room. It is very difficult to get away from. Many people have different ideas and ways of dealing with it. Checking it at certain times during the day is a good way.

The course instructor used two flags on email. The red flag was for what needed to be done today. The yellow flags were things that could wait to be answered. Those he would set a specific time of the week for. I don’t think that would work for us but maybe we could spend the last hour of the day on the yellow flag items?

Turning your phone off or turning off notifications or even turning on your phone “driving” mode can help mitigate distractions.

I thought the course was interesting. Liked the instructor and always like listening to Arianna Huffington’s accent. I am shallow in that regard. I admit it.

This particular jewel of a post is about why my website seems to be so damn negative all of the time. It’s never about anything happy. All of the stuff I write seems to be from the perspective of some old guy who hates everyone.

I prefer not to live in a bubble. The world is not a happy place. It is a dark and sad place. When you look at the terrible things that human beings do to each other each and every day it sickens you. You wonder to yourself how we’ll ever evolve to beings better than where we are now.

I don’t believe we’ll ever see an evolved society like you might see in a science fiction movie or television show. Human beings are way too fucked up for that. And disagreeable, did I mention disagreeable? I think you only need to look as far as our current political system in my country to see how far we have to go as a species. Everything in Washington is a fight, a war, a stand, or some other damn thing that is more about the politicians themselves than the people they are supposed to serve.

We have a representative government which means I don’t give a fuck what the guy I elected thinks. He or she is supposed to vote exactly the way I tell them to. That is how it is supposed to work.

I often post that I wish a big asteroid would smack into our planet and knock humans off of it. We have a habit of dragging everything down with us and I think Earth should be allowed to continue.

We’ll never evolve as a species if we can’t get past our differences and start treating each other better.

I guess that means we’ll never evolve. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to go back to flinging poo.

From the Franklin-Covey system…

Seek to understand before seeking to be understood.

In light of recent events, this is even more important.

To extend the quote…

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.

That was a quote from Dr. Franklin Covey.

I try to live this every day. I do not go around telling people how to live their lives or what they should or shouldn’t be doing.

I think that is a good way to live. I’m not a stand up guy. I never have been. I’m not a great leader nor do I wish to be. Those are external definitions and really don’t mean a lot to me personally. I like to focus on me.

If at the end of my life someone can point to me and say “He wasn’t a bad guy” I think that would be a nice thing. Will I care after I am dead?

Of course not. You know. Because, I’ll be dead.