I get the weekend off, which probably sounds like a pretty odd statement. Still, as our team is in the midst of deadlines, it’ll be a nice reprieve from the past few Saturdays when most of us have been in the office (and pretty busy).
Midst is a bit of a funny word to pronounce.
When I was a kid, free time seemed so great. I waited until the weekend or for a day with a light amount of homework to get some precious free time. It’d be a treat to have it – an ephemeral time when anything was possible.
Somewhere along the way, I became a lot more indecisive. Now free time brings with it the impending question: what should I do? And it’s not that I don’t have enough things to do. It’s that I have too many.
That, combined with the fact that it’s harder to arrange activities with friends than it was in elementary school (when my parents would take care of all that!) means that I often don’t end up doing much.
There are video and board games I want to play, movies I want to see, skills I want to learn, places I want to eat at, TV I want to watch, and chores I should do. Because there are so many things I can do, I usually end up taking the path of least resistance. If I get in the car, I’ll have to make another decision – where to go? – so I end up usually sitting on the couch and watching something that I’ve recorded. This doesn’t make me unhappy; after all, that was one of the things I wanted to do in the first place.
Still, it sometimes makes me feel defeated. Don’t I have better things to do? Shouldn’t I be practicing my new guitar or cleaning the litter box or making dinner or going out and discovering new places in our neighborhood?
So, I need to do two things. First, I need to prevent myself from second-guessing my choices. If I choose to order a pizza and watch the next cycle of America’s Next Top Model with Katie, I should enjoy it. I should relish the terrible dialogue that comes out of Tyra’s mouth.
Second, I should take a page from what I do at work fairly often and make decisions. I’ve made choices that impact millions of Sims players; I’m perfectly capable of deciding whether we eat dinner at home or out.
In other words, I gotta believe!
In myself.
I didn’t love Moulin Rouge! right away. I remember seeing it in college in our campus auditorium with several people a few years older than me (Matt Heap, Clare, and Darren maybe?) and feeling like it was a pretty solid movie. Then, I watched it again. And a few more times, with the commentary. I don’t know if it’s the perfect sad love story, the musical numbers, or the frenetic acting through most of the first half of the film, but this is a movie I’ll never turn down. It makes my lips quiver and my eyes water every time. In a very different way, Juno makes me laugh and cry and want to have a baby with Michael Cera. I mean, my wife.
Album: Ben Folds, Rockin’ the Suburbs 
TV Show (active): Lost 
Two years ago, I had never heard of a Canadian show called Slings and Arrows. Now, it’s probably my favorite show ever. Clocking in at only 18 hours of television across three 6-episode seasons, it’s something that can be watched in its entirety in a single weekend. At times funny and touching, all three seasons are constructed masterfully without a wasted minute on screen. There’s nothing to do when the final half hour of the series plays other than weep.