screw sports almanac.

Today, my scalar rating of just how badly i want a time machine was unusually high, a full 8.5. This is only .5 less than the time i sent a message that further ruined an already unstable and unhealthy relationship, and left me far worse off than not having a formal date. It is equal to the time i said aphrodisiac in front of my parents by accident. Interestingly enough though, nothing really went catastrophically wrong. It was just the realization of how much i have let my relationship problems actually ruin a good portion of my young life.  In fact, while i was brainstorming that earlier comparison, almost all of the regrets i could think of were one's to do with my pursuit of having a girlfriend. It has more or less destroyed my education, and there is evidence to support my theory that I'm not just lazy. That's why if I ever make a time machine, screw going forward in time and buying a sports almanac, the improvement redirecting myself to things that actually matter, would easily pay for itself.  BUT no time to wallow in self pity. All is well here and now, and nothing can change what has happened. "no regrets."- Scott   That's the thing about life, the simple concept that has taken me a full 18 years to grasp. That the time travel available in your mind is only ever going to lead to a bittersweet frustration.  In a sense you can immerse yourself in your memories, but no amount of re-thinking ever changed the past. No amount of listening to 90's on ''forgotten 'till recovered, then satisfyingly familiar'' discs will ever make boy bands cool again, mobile phones the size of bricks, and the biggest problem in your life will never again be if you get to wash, or dry the dishes. (on a side note I am listening to the proclaimers as I type) Nevertheless,  this is my brain I'm counting on, and it has a lifetime reputation of not letting go of unwanted information. For example i still know every word to Cha Cha Cha by Jimmy Luxury and the Tommy Rome orchestra, which I haven't heard since 1998. So inevitably my brain perpetually loops over regretted experiences. If we were to equate my life experience to say, a library, the section marked 'regrets' would be about the size of the dictionaries/atlas section, but my brain can only really can be bothered to leaf through the most recent. Which is almost like watching the same episode of Seinfeld, over and over again, causing a temporary state of insanity. This is truly an unorganised vent of my frustration, allow me to 'summarise' the point of this rant...

Imagine you're driving to a party, and you're late, very late. So you're speeding a little,  you read the street sign you were looking for and dart into the street. It seemed a little odd that there were no cars parked out the front, or balloons, or in fact any sign of celebration. Nonetheless You knock on the door of no.7. Only to find its the wrong street, wasting yet more precious time. Embarrassed, you apologize to the 58 year old shirtless man who's birthday it wasn't, and dash back to the car.  So you re-enter the main road, and begin to drive more slowly to give you time to read the signs more carefully. Then out of nowhere a van pokes out of the bushes and gauges your speed. Luckily because of the previous dilemma which seemed bad at the time, has now put you in the right place at the right time, at the right speed! That's my optimistic theory on the purpose of regrets.

I heard this on the lyrics of a 90's pop song and felt it was relevant...    And of course you can't become if you only say what you would have done

patience, rushing and procrastination

Today I exhibited two polar opposites of behavior I rushed and procrastinated.
I get the impression that everyone else has a sort of routine they go through to get ready for their commitments in the morning. Breakfast, shower, shave... or something of the sort. I used to indulge in the luxury that was, organisation. Lately however, a priority shift has made desperately squeezing in as much sleep as is humanly possible has rendered all other morning rituals obsolete. My alarm was set for 6:56 and 7:00, so that i would definitely have crossed the hurdle, that is the side of my bed, and have both my feet planted on the floor by 7:02. I had another alarm set for 7:10, this alarm was to determine when my shower was intended to end. Setting this alarm in advance, encourages me to get in the shower early, which speeds up the process of sifting through baskets for clean socks, picking a shirt that I haven't worn twice this week, and jeans I haven't worn 4 times this week. So on the day of the single most significant test in my young life, I went back to bed by 7:16am, and set an alarm to wake me up at both 7:54 and 8:00. It seems ironic, that i have perfected laziness to a precise science. In hindsight though, and I honestly had not thought of this until just now, I could have just woken up at 7:35... or in an ideal world, gone to sleep the previous night, at a reasonable time. Alas, I'm determined to see it through, at least 10 lengthy, and yet meaningful blogs. Now as you may have astutely observed, my intense regime leaves no time for a healthy breakfast, a flaw I did not notice. Until someone who I immediately formed a malicious grudge towards, walked past me with hot pancakes in hand. It's possible I was already uncomfortably hungry, and had not paid any attention to it until that point, nevertheless, I will not sign their yearbook in my spite. The hunger was overwhelming, and I had approximately 4 minutes until the test began. My friends assured me, it was not worth the risk, they talked to me as if it was some kind of intervention. I rebutted their arguments, with "I can't pass the test on an empty stomach, and a morning jog helps prepare the mind for a test". Of course, this is the modern hip-hop world and sentences no longer flow from the mouth of youth like that, without profanity sandwiched in the pauses. Moments later I embarked on my uphill journey (the carpark is on a slant) to the shops across the road from the college. I ran so fast I was literally breaking the speed limit, in the carpark. Wallet in hand, i hurried into the store with every intent of buying an apple, a flavoured milk and a packet of biscuits. It was only when all was approved and I left the store that i realised my folly. I had accidentally parted with fruit flavored mentos, a coke, and a creme bun, actually 3 three creme buns. The culprit of this marketing brilliance, was the advertisers exploitation of the very human desire to buy whatever was closest and go. I hurried back, not quite as fast as i had on the way to the shops, despite the terrain advantage, but I thought better than to shake the coke. Also, despite running being presumably a leg type of function, arms must be in some way important, because eating the bun while in motion proved tricky. I arrived with what I assumed was seconds to spare, panting, sweating, collapsed in a heap in a corner, with creme in hand and on jacket. However, due to unforeseen circumstances the test was delayed by twenty or so minutes without notice...
And the procrastination part of my day is the fact that I'm writing this blog at 1am despite having another vital test tomorrow morning, a job application to write by next sunday, an assignment due yesterday and a short story due on friday, its going to be a good week.
In conclusion, I find that I'm not one characteristic, personality is circumstantial, things can be done completely differently in the same day. Sometimes I'm organised, other times I rush, and usually my policy is why do today, what can be done tomorrow?

Five hours

Today i noticed something about how infinitely different five hours can be. I spent an unhealthily large portion of my day asleep. This morning i "woke up" at 7, blinded by the backyard fence reflecting the sun into my eyes, it was almost like being high beamed into alertness. However, it was just a flick of my wrist and 30 thin metal sheets uniformly twisted backwards and shielded my room from the light. I vaguely recall intermittently dreaming of getting a text message, that changed everything, then realising it was a dream. Then i would over think the fact that it was a dream, abruptly stir myself awake and dive to my phone to check that i hadn't received a message, just in case. Unfortunately it was just a dream. Nobody had spontaneously sent me a text between 7 and 8 am, things were still the same, I would just have to hope that the day would fix itself.
At 11am i received a text. There are many cliched terms i could use to describe the nature of my hearts beat and its apparent proximity to my throat, so I'll be try to be original. It was as if my heart was a marching band in the very top of my chest, at the thought that she had messaged me. However, when i read who the sender was, the bandsman dropped their instruments, the drummer remained seated but changed his beat, it was more of a solemn thud, rather than a frantic thrashing. It was just my friend giving me uninteresting update about the towing of my car, great. At around 2pm, my phone rang, I did not have high expectations for this phone call, so i wasn't dissapointed when  it was simply my friend asking if I would make it to basketball on time. He was surprised to hear it was my wake up voice at 2pm, but from 7 am onward there was no real incentive for me to put both my feet on the floor. (on a side note, he would have recognised my wake up voice from 8:15am june 25th 2009 when he called to inform me that "your favourite singer is dead." to which i embarrassingly  replied "hannah montanna?" "no, michael jackson" )
So finally at 2:16pm, i flicked the blinds, and in anticlimactic fashion I stumbled on the empty coke bottle, to rise from my sleep. I lost my game, by a few points, and the team i regularly stay to watch, tied, but both games exhibited some of the most biased decisions I've ever seen. On top of losing, twice. I was coldly ignored by the girl i had spent the last 38 hours thinking about, even as I type this I have my phone on the numpad, on loud, just in case she texts me. There was much profanity shouted at the refs, a few tears shed, and many high 5's a complete overheated soup of emotion. It was when i arrived home at 7, that it occurred to me that half of my day at that point was spent in a bed. But that the half i spent in bed, was more or less no time at all. Nothing occurred, there is nothing to distinguish that time from any other morning, it won't be long till its forgotten. But the accompanying 5 hours will likely stay with me for years to come. There are two mental images in particular, the look on my friends face when he was given the most unjust foul in the history of the game, and the girl as she turned and made small talk with her sister to avoid giving me the satisfaction that i even exist to her. (But, allow me to clarify, I'm still a happy person, I can see the bigger picture, I'm not going to let my girl troubles, cause real trouble) Here is the point of this seemingly incoherent rambling, if you were to draw a graph of your life's emotion and significant times, it would have intermittent spikes, emerging from flat, much like a rictor scale on a fault line.

Tea

Today i noticed something, as lame and pretentious as it may sound i found a parallel between risks in life and tea... I boiled the kettle and leaned casually on the kitchen bench, which for some reason is dramatically more comfortable when the sun is down, maybe there's no link?  But i looked away, and pretended to text, eventually the kettle boiled. Hurriedly i prepared the tea, which was a simple process, pour water and thrust my hand into the multicultural box of variety and hand pick a tea packet. I should clarify though I'm not personally a believer in tea brands varying in taste. If you can tell a difference, you likely have fantasies of yourself as some tea sommelier, or an unhealthy addiction, or an acute sense of taste, in which case congrats! I took one sip, its unlikely i consumed more tea than a cat drinks milk with a single lap. With that one sip however, I was able to accurately 'test the water' so to speak. It was alarmingly hot. So as expected, i flinched and squealed like a girl and made some variation of the word ''ohsnapthatissomereallyhottea'', so immediately took a course of action to prevent further upheaval. I leaned casually on the kitchen bench, the tea menacingly steaming on the other side, taunting me. I do like tea, tea is good, and would provide long term benefits including but not limited to keeping me awake long enough to finish my assignment. After debriefing myself from the traumatic experience, and waiting long enough that the venture of putting the cup to my chin was risk free, i wrapped my fingers around the handle. I began to drink, still stunned from my experience, i was much less cavalier, ever more cautiously i sipped from the cup. The sensation of relief flowed through my body like cold tea, as i sipped from the cup which contents i assumed was just approaching that imprecise temperature of 'just right'. But alas, it felt disturbingly like cold tea, for in fact the tea was so far from the fiery self of its past, i could take great unwholesome gulps. It was at this moment, actually no, moments later, after comforting myself about loosing a whole cup of perfectly good tea, to my own sense of caution. That i realised that my recent life experience was accurately embodied in just a few minutes, leading to my ground breaking conclusion. The bigger the risk, the greater the reward. I would far rather admit myself to hospital, with the taste of great tea still on my scolded tongue, than cowardly divide a gulp of cold tea to my stomach and a larger portion to the drain.