Friday, May 26, 2006

New Year’s Resolutions in May

I’ve decided that from now on I’m making my resolutions in May, May 26th to be exact. It’s my birthday and I’ve decided that it carries more significance to me. I mean what is January 1st to me? Just some day a pope decreed to be the first of the year. Well I refuse to let my goals be influenced by papal decree anymore! Off with the chains of papal oppression that yoke me! From hence forth, my goal making will fall on the most important day of MY life—the day I came into the world.

Plus, making goals in January has been clinically proven to be ineffective. The evidence is overwhelming, and I have the results to prove it—just look at the success rate of all my past goals. I feel I’ve thoroughly tested that method and now it’s time to put something else to the test.

I won’t share all of my May new year’s goals here, but I will list one: write more in my blog. Now, motivational speakers, spiritual councilors, and business professors all agree, goals must be specific. I guess I can see where they’re coming from. Based on my recent track record, for me to write “more” in my blog would only require me to post something every six months. Therefore, my goal is to write in my blog at least three times a month.

Yeah, it’s a pretty pansy goal since three times a month is almost nothing, but you should see some of my other goals. I’m gonna be too busy with those to have time to write in my blog all the time.

Happy new year’s to you and good luck with your goals. Also, please comment with any methods you’ve proven successful in your own personal goal setting.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Anti-Idiocy Campaign

From the title of this post, you might think it’s a rant about people who have offended me or who I think are stupid. Unfortunately, the post is really about me. This post is my vow to change...

Yesterday, I came to the stark realization that I'm an idiot. Well, maybe not all the time, but I do some stuff that's really pretty stupid. This is upsetting because I consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent person. I even feel like I have a pretty decent amount of "common sense." For some reason I just choose to ignore it on occasion.

I'm not sure why this happens. Maybe it's a cry for attention or maybe it's because I like to make people laugh, or maybe it's because I read too much Guiness Book of World Records as a kid. Whatever the case, I end up being like that "one guy" everyone seems to know who will get really drunk and then accept all kinds of ridiculous challenges and make an ass of himself. Only I don't drink, so I have even less of an excuse than that guy.

Some examples of idiotic things I've done recently?

  • I ate fifteen cups of cold cereal with eight and a half cups (that's over half a gallon) of milk in under an hour. Why? It was a contest. What was the prize? Pride. Braggin’ rights. Being REALLY sick (read "having diarrhea") for the next three days.
  • I sprained my right ankle playing basketball (not idiotic), but then I sprained my left ankle two weeks later because I was playing way before my right ankle was better so I was favoring my left ankle a lot. Not only did I sprain my ankle, I completely bricked the lay-up I was driving to make. (very idiotic).
  • I ingested two double bacon cheeseburgers (each with a full pound of beef), a large plate of fries, a quarter pound of licorice, a blackberry shake, a slice of apple pie w/ ice cream, a bottle of Henry Weinhard's root beer, and about three glasses of water in around an hour. Why? Some guys I was with challenged me to. What did I get? A handshake from the incredulous owner of Ray's Tavern.
  • I gave myself three blisters trying to prove that I was good at rappelling despite the fact that I'd never done it before.

Trust me; the list could go on and on. These are just things I've done in the last month. If you know me, you can probably think of plenty of other examples. In fact, you're probably wondering why it took me so long to come to this realization. I have no answer for you.

I will still try and make people laugh, and I'll probably still be an attention whore, but from now on, I'm going to first ask myself the question: Is this a stupid thing to do?