Sometimes it's good to be introspective and evaluate yourself and the things over which you control. Other times it's good to be extrospective (this is an actual word) and evaluate the things outside yourself over which you have no control. Today I shall do the latter. Below is an incomplete list of things I find overrated and underrated.
OVERRATED
Pajama Day: My oldest boy goes to a D.C. public elementary school. Every so often they have "Free Dress Week" (in lieu of the usual uniform), and always one of the themes is "Pajama Day." I do not like Pajama Day, because pajamas are specifically made to not be worn all day. Pajamas are not durable, and they're super thin, so it's 35 degrees out (like yesterday), and you're sending your kid to school with a nanometer worth of cotton on. And Lil' S1 always wants to do it up proper, so he insists on wearing his slippers, so now I have to bring an extra set footwear, which is just asking for something to get lost.
Actually, Pajama Day is just a synecdoche for all of Free Dress Week. I don't really like any of it. Some of the other days are "Twin Day" (just asking for kids to feel left out), "Book Character Day" (he went as Captain Barnacles from Octonauts -- sure, it's a show on Netflix, but they have books about it too), "Wild and Wacky Day" (I just put him in normal clothes -- wild and wacky are subjective terms), and "School Spirit Day" (you gotta get parents to buy school paraphernalia somehow). How about normal pants and a sweatshirt day? I could go for that one.
Alcohol: The older I get the less I feel like drinking. I still very much enjoy a cold pilsner or a nice glass of Cabernet Sauvignon among friends. Alcohol is still my social drug of choice. But no matter how little I drink, I pay a price for it later. Knock back a few beers and I go to sleep with a bloated stomach; have a glass of wine or two and I wake up in the middle of night with a mild headache and severe cotton mouth. Maybe if I could sleep in regularly these things wouldn't bother me so much, but when you are waking up at 5:45 every morning to a crying kid (and then on the rare occasions I'm able to coax him back to sleep, his brother wakes up the whole house ten minutes later), you already feel like you're hung over. Adding alcohol to the mix makes it that much worse.
One thing I almost never do now is drink at home by myself or with S (who almost never drinks herself). It's a catch-22 -- if I can't sleep in, I don't want to drink, and if I can sleep in, I don't want to spoil it with alcohol. I want pure, unadulterated slumber. Actually, that's not really a catch-22; it's just prioritizing sleeping over drinking. The joke is that having kids drives you to drink (It's not wine; it's "mommy juice!"). But for me it did the exact opposite.
Date night: I'm not anti-date night by any means. I recognize the purpose it serves in a relationship. It's just that I don't always have fun on date night. I'm always worrying about the kids; I'm usually tired; S is usually tired; I often don't feel like going out; I'm especially prone to get annoyed by trivial things (even more so than usual); it's usually super expensive; and I don't like the "date night" expectations hanging over my head. Do you ever go on vacation and feel compelled to do the famous things wherever you are because you're there, even though you know you won't really enjoy them -- like you find yourself at a museum of something you don't care about, pretending to read the placards, secretly wishing you had just stayed at the hotel pool and read a book and napped? That's how I often feel about date night.
Incidentally, we have a date night scheduled for tomorrow night. We are going to see Moonlight, which I really want to see, and we got our favorite babysitter, so I won't be as anxious about the kids. It's actually setting up to be a good date night. We shall see.
Knowing how to sew buttons: My sister recently shared an article on Facebook about preparing your teenager children to be functional, independent adults, and she included a list of things that she wants her two boys (who still have a few years before their teen years) to be able to do before they leave the house. It was a good list, but one of them was "sew buttons." She might have gotten this from my dad, as I remember him talking about what a useful skill this was to have in the navy. Also the inability to sew buttons is a common synecdoche (apparently this is my word of the day, and I'm not even sure I'm using it correctly) for a lack of traditional life skills among today's youth. "Kids can't even sew buttons anymore!" But I'm going the other way with this. To all the teenagers reading this right now: You don't have to learn how to sew buttons.
I'm sure once upon a time somewhere it was a valuable skill, like, say, in the navy in the '70s on an aircraft carrier floating by itself somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. But today, in urban society, it's not really that useful a thing to know. First off, I need a button sewn on something maybe once every few years. Since men don't where button-up shirts and ties everyday like we used to, I suspect loose buttons are not the problem they once were. Second off, when a button does pop off you can take it to a dry cleaner and get it reattached for -- what? -- five bucks? If you consider the alternative -- putting in the time to learn how to sew and buying the supplies to keep on hand -- I contend it is actually more efficient to not learn how to sew buttons.
This is illustrates my main gripe with most "life hacks" and "common skills" in general. There is often a pro-DIY bias to everything, often underplaying the fact that DIY activities usually take a lot of time and energy. There are many, many things I would rather pay somebody to do than learn how to do myself (e.g., change the oil in my car or change a tire on my car or do just about anything on my car). Even if I didn't put any monetary value on my leisure time (which I do), it would still be economically inefficient in many cases to spend time on so-called life skills stuff, because I can use that time making crossword puzzles instead. I get at least $300 every time I publish a crossword, so... that's a lot of buttons. Now, obviously not everybody has the exact same options as me, but I think you get my point.
The last thing I will say on this is that there is also a large degree of back-in-my-day-ism with life skills. It's more about lamenting the changing times than it is about kids being ignorant. I hate back-in-my-day-ism, because, by definition, we are no longer back in your day! I remember when I was growing up there was a lot of tongue-clucking among adults about kids didn't know how to drive a stick shift anymore. (I was one of these kids, and now I'm one of these adults; I still can't really drive a manual transmission car.) Well, guess what, not only are we now at a point in time when driving stick is almost a completely obsolete skill, we might not be that far away from the day when driving period is almost a completely obsolete skill.
UNDERRATED
Podcasts: Podcasts are certainly starting to get their due, but nowhere near what they should be getting. I learned of a stunning statistic recently: Less than 100% of the population listens to a podcast on a regular basis. I know, can you believe it?! I, for one, was on the podcast train very early -- almost a decade ago, back when people didn't even know what they were. But I'm no podcast hipster. I'm a podcast evangelist. I want to make everybody a convert. Podcasts are amazing, and there are so many good ones that I literally can't keep up with them all. I've had to make some tough cuts over the years. I very famously unsubscribed from The Adam Carolla Show, but I more quietly also had to ditch a few others. Sorry Terry Gross, sorry Sklar Brothers, sorry Jonah Keri, sorry Dan Patrick.
There are two great things about podcasts: (1) they're on-demand; (2) they don't require the same attention as something on paper or on a screen. (2) is the true game-changer. You can do menial tasks and listen to podcasts. How did people do laundry or walk the dog or drive to work before the invention of podcasts? Fifteen years ago were we all just bored all the time?
Anyway, since you asked, here is my current list of podcast subscriptions in no particular order:
Missing Richard Simmons
The Poscast
On the Grid
Playing with Science
The Political Gabfest
Hang Up and Listen
The Gist
The Ringer MLB Show
The Bill Barwell Show
Effective Wild
NPR Politics Podcast
Vox's The Weeds
StarTalk Radio
The Bill Simmons Podcast
Radiolab
This American Life
Real Time with Bill Maher
The Dave Dameshek Football Program
Savage Lovecast -- Magnum Feed
This puts me just about at podcast equilibrium. I'm more or less at a steady state, where the amount of podcasts coming into my phone equals the amount of podcasts leaving my phone. Some of the less time-sensitive ones build-up two or three episodes at a time and sit for a while, but then I'll have to go on a long drive or take a flight or something and binge-listen right through them.
Fighting for Sport: I started taking Krav Maga classes a few months ago, and I love it so far. It's great cardio; it teaches me some basic self-defense; and best of all it's something physically intense I can do with other people. I wrestled in high school, and I found that it's something I really missed throughout the years. It's not just the competition; it's also that physically cathartic feeling I got when I was getting my face ground into the mat (or better yet grinding somebody else's face into the mat). Sometimes you just want to exhaustedly grapple with another human being in a pool of sweat (and possibly a little blood), while somebody (in the case of my Krav Maga class, it's a jittery 27-year-old with too many tattoos) stands over you and barks a mix of criticisms and platitudes in your direction.
It's good to do it in a classroom setting too because then you build a sense of camaraderie with the other participants. After class you feel like you accomplished something together. It's make believe, of course; you didn't actually do anything other beat up some pads. But it feels like you did. And it feels good.
In general, I really appreciate fighting for sport. I'm a big fan of MMA. I get why people don't like it. It can be pretty violent, but it's consensual violence. I've heard it called "human cock fighting" before, but that makes about as much sense as "clean coal." Just as coal isn't clean due to the fact it's coal, humans aren't roosters due to the fact they are humans. It two people want to get into an octagon and test their mettle against one another, while others watch it for entertainment, so be it. Cuts heal and bruises go away.
Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches: I've been on a huge PBJ kick of late... well, not even of late, it's been going on for like a year. I don't eat them that often, because they aren't really that healthy, but there are few better ways to start your weekend than with a cup of coffee, a banana, and half a PBJ on toast.
The key, of course, is getting the right kind of peanut butter and jelly. For the former, I try to find something "natural" that doesn't separate overnight into a rock-hard block of peanut butter concentrate underneath a pool of oil. For the latter, I go purely for taste. The best combination I've found to date is Field Day organic, smooth, and unsalted peanut butter, and Bonne Maman strawberry preserves. Although I recently went to Trader Joe's, and they didn't have either of these brands, so I'm going to try something new. Hopefully I won't be disappointed.
Pandora Radio: I've heard these type of streaming service aren't great for artists, but they are great for people like me who don't have time to "get into" music anymore, but also don't want to listen to the same old albums over and over again. I've been working on my main Pandora station, trying to get it to play the right mix of songs I know and songs I don't know, and I think I've gotten it down pretty well.
Here are a few great songs I learned through Pandora.
And with that, I bid you adieu. Hey-y-y-y-y, I'm not a young man anymore...
Until next time...
OVERRATED
Pajama Day: My oldest boy goes to a D.C. public elementary school. Every so often they have "Free Dress Week" (in lieu of the usual uniform), and always one of the themes is "Pajama Day." I do not like Pajama Day, because pajamas are specifically made to not be worn all day. Pajamas are not durable, and they're super thin, so it's 35 degrees out (like yesterday), and you're sending your kid to school with a nanometer worth of cotton on. And Lil' S1 always wants to do it up proper, so he insists on wearing his slippers, so now I have to bring an extra set footwear, which is just asking for something to get lost.
Actually, Pajama Day is just a synecdoche for all of Free Dress Week. I don't really like any of it. Some of the other days are "Twin Day" (just asking for kids to feel left out), "Book Character Day" (he went as Captain Barnacles from Octonauts -- sure, it's a show on Netflix, but they have books about it too), "Wild and Wacky Day" (I just put him in normal clothes -- wild and wacky are subjective terms), and "School Spirit Day" (you gotta get parents to buy school paraphernalia somehow). How about normal pants and a sweatshirt day? I could go for that one.
Alcohol: The older I get the less I feel like drinking. I still very much enjoy a cold pilsner or a nice glass of Cabernet Sauvignon among friends. Alcohol is still my social drug of choice. But no matter how little I drink, I pay a price for it later. Knock back a few beers and I go to sleep with a bloated stomach; have a glass of wine or two and I wake up in the middle of night with a mild headache and severe cotton mouth. Maybe if I could sleep in regularly these things wouldn't bother me so much, but when you are waking up at 5:45 every morning to a crying kid (and then on the rare occasions I'm able to coax him back to sleep, his brother wakes up the whole house ten minutes later), you already feel like you're hung over. Adding alcohol to the mix makes it that much worse.
One thing I almost never do now is drink at home by myself or with S (who almost never drinks herself). It's a catch-22 -- if I can't sleep in, I don't want to drink, and if I can sleep in, I don't want to spoil it with alcohol. I want pure, unadulterated slumber. Actually, that's not really a catch-22; it's just prioritizing sleeping over drinking. The joke is that having kids drives you to drink (It's not wine; it's "mommy juice!"). But for me it did the exact opposite.
Date night: I'm not anti-date night by any means. I recognize the purpose it serves in a relationship. It's just that I don't always have fun on date night. I'm always worrying about the kids; I'm usually tired; S is usually tired; I often don't feel like going out; I'm especially prone to get annoyed by trivial things (even more so than usual); it's usually super expensive; and I don't like the "date night" expectations hanging over my head. Do you ever go on vacation and feel compelled to do the famous things wherever you are because you're there, even though you know you won't really enjoy them -- like you find yourself at a museum of something you don't care about, pretending to read the placards, secretly wishing you had just stayed at the hotel pool and read a book and napped? That's how I often feel about date night.
Incidentally, we have a date night scheduled for tomorrow night. We are going to see Moonlight, which I really want to see, and we got our favorite babysitter, so I won't be as anxious about the kids. It's actually setting up to be a good date night. We shall see.
Knowing how to sew buttons: My sister recently shared an article on Facebook about preparing your teenager children to be functional, independent adults, and she included a list of things that she wants her two boys (who still have a few years before their teen years) to be able to do before they leave the house. It was a good list, but one of them was "sew buttons." She might have gotten this from my dad, as I remember him talking about what a useful skill this was to have in the navy. Also the inability to sew buttons is a common synecdoche (apparently this is my word of the day, and I'm not even sure I'm using it correctly) for a lack of traditional life skills among today's youth. "Kids can't even sew buttons anymore!" But I'm going the other way with this. To all the teenagers reading this right now: You don't have to learn how to sew buttons.
I'm sure once upon a time somewhere it was a valuable skill, like, say, in the navy in the '70s on an aircraft carrier floating by itself somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. But today, in urban society, it's not really that useful a thing to know. First off, I need a button sewn on something maybe once every few years. Since men don't where button-up shirts and ties everyday like we used to, I suspect loose buttons are not the problem they once were. Second off, when a button does pop off you can take it to a dry cleaner and get it reattached for -- what? -- five bucks? If you consider the alternative -- putting in the time to learn how to sew and buying the supplies to keep on hand -- I contend it is actually more efficient to not learn how to sew buttons.
This is illustrates my main gripe with most "life hacks" and "common skills" in general. There is often a pro-DIY bias to everything, often underplaying the fact that DIY activities usually take a lot of time and energy. There are many, many things I would rather pay somebody to do than learn how to do myself (e.g., change the oil in my car or change a tire on my car or do just about anything on my car). Even if I didn't put any monetary value on my leisure time (which I do), it would still be economically inefficient in many cases to spend time on so-called life skills stuff, because I can use that time making crossword puzzles instead. I get at least $300 every time I publish a crossword, so... that's a lot of buttons. Now, obviously not everybody has the exact same options as me, but I think you get my point.
The last thing I will say on this is that there is also a large degree of back-in-my-day-ism with life skills. It's more about lamenting the changing times than it is about kids being ignorant. I hate back-in-my-day-ism, because, by definition, we are no longer back in your day! I remember when I was growing up there was a lot of tongue-clucking among adults about kids didn't know how to drive a stick shift anymore. (I was one of these kids, and now I'm one of these adults; I still can't really drive a manual transmission car.) Well, guess what, not only are we now at a point in time when driving stick is almost a completely obsolete skill, we might not be that far away from the day when driving period is almost a completely obsolete skill.
UNDERRATED
Podcasts: Podcasts are certainly starting to get their due, but nowhere near what they should be getting. I learned of a stunning statistic recently: Less than 100% of the population listens to a podcast on a regular basis. I know, can you believe it?! I, for one, was on the podcast train very early -- almost a decade ago, back when people didn't even know what they were. But I'm no podcast hipster. I'm a podcast evangelist. I want to make everybody a convert. Podcasts are amazing, and there are so many good ones that I literally can't keep up with them all. I've had to make some tough cuts over the years. I very famously unsubscribed from The Adam Carolla Show, but I more quietly also had to ditch a few others. Sorry Terry Gross, sorry Sklar Brothers, sorry Jonah Keri, sorry Dan Patrick.
There are two great things about podcasts: (1) they're on-demand; (2) they don't require the same attention as something on paper or on a screen. (2) is the true game-changer. You can do menial tasks and listen to podcasts. How did people do laundry or walk the dog or drive to work before the invention of podcasts? Fifteen years ago were we all just bored all the time?
Anyway, since you asked, here is my current list of podcast subscriptions in no particular order:
Missing Richard Simmons
The Poscast
On the Grid
Playing with Science
The Political Gabfest
Hang Up and Listen
The Gist
The Ringer MLB Show
The Bill Barwell Show
Effective Wild
NPR Politics Podcast
Vox's The Weeds
StarTalk Radio
The Bill Simmons Podcast
Radiolab
This American Life
Real Time with Bill Maher
The Dave Dameshek Football Program
Savage Lovecast -- Magnum Feed
This puts me just about at podcast equilibrium. I'm more or less at a steady state, where the amount of podcasts coming into my phone equals the amount of podcasts leaving my phone. Some of the less time-sensitive ones build-up two or three episodes at a time and sit for a while, but then I'll have to go on a long drive or take a flight or something and binge-listen right through them.
Fighting for Sport: I started taking Krav Maga classes a few months ago, and I love it so far. It's great cardio; it teaches me some basic self-defense; and best of all it's something physically intense I can do with other people. I wrestled in high school, and I found that it's something I really missed throughout the years. It's not just the competition; it's also that physically cathartic feeling I got when I was getting my face ground into the mat (or better yet grinding somebody else's face into the mat). Sometimes you just want to exhaustedly grapple with another human being in a pool of sweat (and possibly a little blood), while somebody (in the case of my Krav Maga class, it's a jittery 27-year-old with too many tattoos) stands over you and barks a mix of criticisms and platitudes in your direction.
It's good to do it in a classroom setting too because then you build a sense of camaraderie with the other participants. After class you feel like you accomplished something together. It's make believe, of course; you didn't actually do anything other beat up some pads. But it feels like you did. And it feels good.
In general, I really appreciate fighting for sport. I'm a big fan of MMA. I get why people don't like it. It can be pretty violent, but it's consensual violence. I've heard it called "human cock fighting" before, but that makes about as much sense as "clean coal." Just as coal isn't clean due to the fact it's coal, humans aren't roosters due to the fact they are humans. It two people want to get into an octagon and test their mettle against one another, while others watch it for entertainment, so be it. Cuts heal and bruises go away.
Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches: I've been on a huge PBJ kick of late... well, not even of late, it's been going on for like a year. I don't eat them that often, because they aren't really that healthy, but there are few better ways to start your weekend than with a cup of coffee, a banana, and half a PBJ on toast.
The key, of course, is getting the right kind of peanut butter and jelly. For the former, I try to find something "natural" that doesn't separate overnight into a rock-hard block of peanut butter concentrate underneath a pool of oil. For the latter, I go purely for taste. The best combination I've found to date is Field Day organic, smooth, and unsalted peanut butter, and Bonne Maman strawberry preserves. Although I recently went to Trader Joe's, and they didn't have either of these brands, so I'm going to try something new. Hopefully I won't be disappointed.
Pandora Radio: I've heard these type of streaming service aren't great for artists, but they are great for people like me who don't have time to "get into" music anymore, but also don't want to listen to the same old albums over and over again. I've been working on my main Pandora station, trying to get it to play the right mix of songs I know and songs I don't know, and I think I've gotten it down pretty well.
Here are a few great songs I learned through Pandora.
And with that, I bid you adieu. Hey-y-y-y-y, I'm not a young man anymore...
Until next time...
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