Clean Your Plate Billy!

My parents were not clean your plate kind of people. Why is it then that I feel compelled to eat everything I'm served. Even when I know its too much. For instance I love Jimmy John's number twelve Beach Club. It is turkey breast, provolone cheese, avocado, sliced cucumber, sprouts, lettuce, tomato, and mayo on a white roll. One tasty sandwich. Add salt and vinegar chips and a coke and I'm in heaven. The calorie count on this concoction is overwhelming. I was trying to do weight watchers a few months back and I calculated the points value at around eighteen for just the sandwich. That's about half my allotted points per day. So I'd eat half the sandwich and save the rest for the next day. It was a little soggy and less than tasty after twenty-four hours in the fridge so I stopped doing that.

Now I eat the whole thing. My waistline be damned. What I want to do is eat half and throw away the rest. I just can't bring myself to do it though. It feels like such a waste. I paid for the whole thing I should eat the whole thing right? What if I thought about it like this. The point of eating is to not be hungry and get enough calories to continue at my level of activity. If that is half of what is typically served to me at every single restaurant in America so be it. Half the meal served its purpose. I'm not wasting my money. I am wasting food though. There are hungry children in Africa after all. My other half of a Chuychanga is going to be pretty nasty before it gets to them though. If I eat the whole thing it's not going to help them anyway and its going to make me fat. Where is the sense in that?  

A Hardwick Lesson

I really have no idea how many people read this blog or if anyone gets anything out of it. Sometimes it feels like I'm talking to myself. Or at most to my wife. Which is lovely but what's the point? I think Chris Hardwick would say the point of doing the blog is doing the blog.

I've been totally obsessed with Chris Hardwick's Nerdist podcast lately. So much so that I had to stop listening at work because I wasn't getting enough done. I'd just sit there listening to Chris, Jonah, and Matt laughing as quiet as possible so the bosses wouldn't catch on to what I was up to. The Nerdist podcast is three guys just talking about whatever and bringing on people to talk about whatever. The whatever seems to focus a lot on the creative process which is just fascinating to me.

Chris H. started the podcast because he wanted to. It interested him. He had no idea it would turn into the giant thing it has. I imagine his biggest hope was it would bring out a few more people to his standup shows. If the Podast has a main point other than the creative process it is to do what you love just because you love doing it. If you get it out there you will eventually find an audience.

While its not terribly important to me that I have a huge audience I would like people to read my blog. The fact is though I just love writing it. I'm not pretending to be anyone else here. This is really the stuff I think about. I have no agenda. My favorite subject is religion and particularly what Jesus taught. I struggle with motivation and getting stuff done. This is just me thinking things out. This is the stuff I would love to talk about at a coffee shop with friends

I have decided that even if my wife is the only person that reads this blog I will keep doing it until I don't find it interesting anymore. So thank you Chris.

The Pain I Have Inflicted

When Kay was sixteen years old she ran away from home. Not the I'm going to a friend's house for one night cause I'm mad at my parents kind of running away. The fuck you I'm moving to another town and not coming back kind of running away. At some point during that time she called her father, Don, who lived in Ohio and asked him if she could move in. Her Dad had remarried and his new wife had been a single mother of three. She did not want to raise another child. So Kay's father said no. Kay has made her peace with this. I have not.

This crossed my mind the other day and I wondered if Don, who recently passed away, had gone to his grave regretting that decision? Since he never brought it up I would have to say no. To him it was most likely just another decision he was forced to make due to circumstance beyond his control. What was he to do? Force his new wife to take in a child she did not want? Never having faced that monumental of a moment in my life I would say yes and he's a evil man for not doing it. Anybody got some stones?

At a truly honest level I don't know that I would be strong enough to do the right thing. Admitting that I have to think if I've ever caused that kind of pain. Has there ever been a choice in my life that I felt forced in to that was the wrong decision and someone else felt the consequences even more so than me?