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Jenga!

Moving is a great teacher. Sometimes it teaches you with general unpleasantness, but that’s ok. And perhaps my opinion is biased by my past of being an Army Brat and moving once every few years – so I’ve grown to like moving. Who knows?

This most recent move from Texas to Colorado made me realize something that I hadn’t before. People are like the game Jenga. When I thought of this analogy I thought it was profound, so I told someone and they said, “yeah, ok.” Perhaps it’s not so profound as I thought – but sometimes you need a blog post and so you go ahead and post about your mildly profound thoughts.

Here we go – people are like Jenga. We are composed of these blocks that are our friends, our family, our hobbies, our work, our own accomplishments, and even our stuff.

Moving is a great way to realize what your tower is composed of. This move took me physically away from a good job and a great set of friends and family, and a tolerable apartment. At work I was a known person, and I believe I was liked and people thought I was ok, and I took a fair amount of pride in that.

Now I am an unknown person at work and I need to work hard to establish myself as someone who is smart and can get things done. That’s fine, it’s good to force yourself into challenges.

Growing up I think my family was at the core of my own personal Jenga tower. And my toys and video games were probably a fairly major block as well. A move was disruptive, sure, but I still had my family (most importantly) and myself. As I’ve gotten older the tower is a little more complex now. My family is not one big block but quite a few smaller blocks with each member of my family being their own block, my in-laws involved, my friends are each blocks, my work is a fair-sized block, my home, etc, etc, etc.

jenga_distortedMoving caused a little disruption of the tower and when my wife and I got here, by necessity, each of us was a pretty darn big block for the other. And our home and our satisfaction with our surroundings became blocks too. We still have our friends and family, of course, but the distance changes things a bit.

To assist ourselves my wife and I have both picked up hobbies. This was a ‘trick’ my parents forced on my siblings and I, we always had to be signed up for after school stuff, usually at least a sport. New blocks come flying in and soon your tumbled tower is reassembled. When I was younger, because my family was so important, it only meant the top of the tower had fallen but the core of the tower had stayed intact, which made moving easier.

Now I have learned that work has become pretty important to me, and my tower took a bit of a hit when we moved (and ditto for my wife). But we’ve managed to start re-stacking the pieces, and introducing new blocks into our lives. It’s certainly a process.

What’s the lesson in all this? I suppose it’s that it’s good to have your personal tower composed of immutable things (or as immutable as possible). Hobbies that can go with you like reading or workout out, people, your own sense of self, and yes work is fine – but just be prepared to experience some growing pains when that changes!

Ok, toodles all. Take care to learn your tower and nurture it with strong blocks at the foundation, eh?

 

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Aren’t Our Bodies NEAT!?

I’m writing this while I’m (knock on wood) nearing the end of a cold. The future is bright, my friends. It holds a cough-free me, no runny nose, and not clearing my throat ten times an hour for no good reason.

I’m on day 8 of this cold, and because it’s so fascinating for people to read about my germs, here’s the history of dear coldie and I:

  • Day 0 – No cold yet, but that hint of a sore throat feeling … It doesn’t hurt to swallow, but I notice it, and it’s not a good sign
  • Day 1 – Bit of a sore throat, not so bad, fever struck around noon like a quick punch and I felt miserable
  • Day 2 – A day of sleep (stayed home from work)
  • Day 3 – Back at work, sore throat and hint of a runny nose
  • Day 4 – Minor throat issues, full on runny nose
  • Day 5 – This nose must have Energizer batteries, because that puppy just runs, cough emerging (oh no)
  • Day 6 – Runny nose, cough, but feel decent
  • Day 7 – Less of a runny nose!, less of a cough!, feel decent! (also woke up thinking ‘all right! I slept with my mouth closed!’)
  • Day 8 – Woke up not noticing how nice it is to sleep and be able to breath through my nose (but that’s exactly what I did, I just got back to taking that for granted quickly) … nose, cough, you get the picture

Today I feel pretty decent, I even debated the idea of a jog, but I know that wouldn’t be wise. I’d cough like a maniac if I actually exerted effort.

What I am appreciative of is my nose! On Monday blowing my nose just plain hurt, the pain of rubbing tissues on that same dang spot. Ouch. Putting lotion on was a nice thought, but soon enough I’d be blowing my nose again and there goes that effort. (Which by the way is an effort, being a relatively new guy at work and rubbing lotion around my nostrils while trying to not let co-workers see and think I’m picking my nose … but the secrecy actually probably making it look more like I AM picking my nose.)

The nose, I am happy to report, is healing itself. Now when I blow my nose it’s a nuisance and an irritation, not outright pain.

For you non-cold people reading this (why in God’s name would someone have stuck with this post til the end?), appreciate your functioning body! Appreciate your deep breaths, your non-red nose, your ability to laugh at something without fear of it turning into coughing and people going, “eck” with down-turned mouths and involuntary steps back (keeping their pivot foot in place so as not to be rude).

For those of you just embarking on a cold, hold fast, friends, embrace the soup, grow to hate the soup.

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Grey’s Anatomy, and You

Earlier today I took a quiz, “Can you name every Grey’s Anatomy doctor?”

This got me thinking, am I spending my free time intelligently? Aren’t there countless projects I would like to work on? Aren’t there also a lot of projects I don’t want to work on but they need to get done anyway? Have I ever even watched more than one episode of Grey’s Anatomy?  Why do I ignore, so often, what are far better uses of my time?

I decided to take one more quiz to clear my head. This one is, “Do you know the rules of Calvinball?”

Ok, just finished that quiz and I also failed. This is absurd though. I have read EVERY single Calvin and Hobbes comic! Did this guy just make up random rules to be in line with Calvin? That wouldn’t surprise me. That’d be pretty clever actually.

Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll re-read every Calvin and Hobbes and then resume self-reflection for self-improvement and then I’ll mow the lawn.

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