“When two paths open before you, take the harder one,” it says.

I’d say proverbs like this are one reason why the world needs life coaches and mental health professionals. No. Simply no. File this proverb away with “True love is truly amazing only when it’s truly true.” What?!?? Some sayings are simply silly.

This is not to say the harder path may not be the better path. I would not say NEVER take the harder path. Leap on your chance to learn Greek if that appeals to you. But don’t feel compelled to make your life hard.  What for? Life’s not complicated enough?

Ask instead: What’s the ratio of risk to reward? What’s the opportunity cost? Should I go to the beach instead? Hell, ask who put the tribbles in the quadrotriticale if that will slow you down before you leap.

“It’s hard, therefore I should do it” makes sense sometimes. The harder book will often be the better book. The harder path will tone and firm more muscles, and may possibly offer better scenery.  More intensive efforts sometimes yield higher pay-offs.

Making a culture out of “harder,” though, no doubt contributed to the fact that Americans now may have the longest, toughest work week in the civilized world, at least in terms of hours worked. A report Gallup released “showed the average time worked by full-time employees has ticked up to 46.7 hours a week, or nearly a full extra eight-hour day,” according to Jena McGregor in a September 2, 2014 article in the Washington Post. In fairness, I’ll note that some Asian countries appear to have our work hours beat. The numbers are really muddy out here when you start to look at them.

I would like to boldly assert that 46.7 hours is too damn much, though, unless you love your job. If you love that fulfilling job, 60 or more hours may be fine. For the many Americans who are working to eat and pay the mortgage, however, these hours have gotten out of hand as we buy into American versions of the Nepalese proverb.

Embracing tough options may make those options more palatable, and if the Nepalese proverb has been helping readers manage their daily lives, I don’t want to rock functional boats. Still, I do want to leave this post with a question for you:

Would you be better off on the easier path? Instead of reflexively saying, “I will work harder!” maybe you should make a T-Chart with the advantages of the harder path on one side and the disadvantages on the other.

Is it time to walk away from your harder choice? Or at least cut out a few less-fun hours? Maybe go get a mocha milkshake or a hot fudge sundae instead?

Since sitting appears to be becoming the new smoking, I recommend contemplating this issue in a recliner.

“$350 jeans are dead. $100 leggings killed them”!!

That’s what the Washington Post says anyway. I can still find those holey jeans out there, so rumors of their demise may be premature. But the fact that Walmart sells holey jeans cannot be good for those who are ripping denim at the most exalted levels. True Religion will be closing 27 stores soon, for example.

But $100 yoga pants? Are we mental? Ron Weasley might wonder, and with reason. They are yoga pants, not silver earrings. Yoga pants are only one step removed from yesterday’s bygone tights.

What, so we slap a waistband on stretchy pants and call them art?  I do like how Lululemon calls its pants, “the Holy Grail of Yoga Pants.” The Wunder Under Hi-Rise Tight Nulux 28″ runs $128 on Lululemon’s website.  That’s cheap for a Holy Grail, but pretty damn pricey for an item of clothing that clings much too tightly to the average female butt.  I’d try to sell those Nuluxes by calling them Grails, too.

For those who have all those extra hundreds laying around the house, I say wear whatever you like. It’s your money. I never had any fashion sense anyway. According to the Washington Post, all the fashionable women are wearing yoga pants.

But before you hand over your Benjamin Franklins, it might be worth asking how much we should value the Washington Post’s opinion. At the end of the yoga pants article, the Post posed a fascinating question, one which I never, ever would have thought to ask:

“You can now snort chocolate — but should you?”

No, you shouldn’t. It’s that simple. And you should not spend $128 for yoga pants unless your discretionary income is … considerable, at the very least.

Zombie phrase for the day: Yoga pants are very comfortable when you are dead.

Ooohgahhh ahnnndnzz ahhh ehhhwee guhmmmmdabuhhh ehhn ooh ahhh eehhhdd.

Are you Groot? Are you an ent? A would-be time lord? Elrond’s second cousin from Montana?

Who are you? If fantasy plays no role in your life, I confess I don’t understand you at all. In my world, Groots and Rockets make life better. We need Talosians, elves, wizards and flying dragons.  I’d love to be able to say, “Welcome to Earth!”

I am not oblivious to Independence Day scenarios, but at least for now we mostly get the world we invent in our own heads — especially if we sensibly turn off the news.

Life Coaching Tip for today: Turn off the news! Scour Rotten Tomatoes for a film you missed that’s on your must- or should-see list. Download the film. Or buy a DVD if you must. When evening rolls around, get some popcorn, candy or even a gas station slushy and relax while the G-20 go on without you. You can read a political synopsis later if you care enough.

But for today, put on your comfy slippers and slip into a good fantasy or adventure. You are what you eat. That applies to movies and television, as well as Takis and nachos. Is the news giving you indigestion? Marvel superheroes can cure your peptic discomfort.

Captain America makes my whole world better.

Who makes your world better?

 

Just for fun I offer the following haiku:

Errant Spectacles

Where are my glasses?

Ran away with shoes and keys!

They come. They go. Damn.

Speaking of magic, reader, I’d like to make an observation about yesterday’s ruminations. You had a craving. Maybe you even had a plan, a set of carefully laid-out intentions. Somehow you were thwarted. Keep in mind that without Ron’s broken wand, Gilderoy Lockhart’s memory charm would have succeeded. Sometimes a taped-up, misfiring wand is exactly what you need. Sometimes the luckiest thing that can happen is that moment when you break your wand.  Some plans should backfire.

You can’t always recognize the plans that should go awry. The U.S. divorce rate pretty much proves that. But being lucky enough to be able to say good riddance to the handsome one who rode away — that may be one of those days when your wand blasted you by mistake in just the right way at just the right time.

Reality is far too damn complicated. But one saving grace to that fact lies in broken wands and furry-tailed water goblets. Did your spell go wrong? Or were you simply meant to have a furry-tailed water goblet?

Embrace the furry goblet if that’s what you get. Set it free or change it back if you must, but don’t waste energy over the goblet you never had. Make a paradigm shift instead, and decide the best goblets have tails.

Who decides all this weird stuff anyway? Who puts value on Bruno Mars, sushi and sequels of movies created from Disney rides? You do.

That gives you enormous power to shape the universe to your liking if you can just avoid being whiny.

Zombie phrase for the day:

I am glad to be done with dental floss.

Ahhhmmm gahhhdd duhdee dunnd ihd duhhlll loahth.

 

 

Lessons from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:

1) Don’t give up. A Ford Anglia can fly up to your window at any time. Or you can pretend a Ford Anglia has flown up to your window. In fact, you don’t even need the Ford Anglia. First floor window? If you are in good shape, try carefully exiting through a window today instead of the door.

(Or decide to be sensible and save the window entrances and exits for heroic firefighters. This blog is about resting, after all, not falling out of windows. The point here is that we often have more options than we believe.)

2) Your Dobby could arrive at any moment. How do you know he won’t? You have never seen a house elf before? Well, neither had Harry.  Has it been a long, dry spell? Too many muggles and too little butterbeer? Magic may pop up in your bedroom, laundry room, or classroom tomorrow.  Magic has its own timing. Your job is to recognize magic when the sparks start to fly or, trickier yet, when they don’t.

Coaching Tip for Today: Believe in magic and butterbeer. Believe that when the door closes, you can open a window. We mostly end up stuck in ticky-tack boxes because we use heuristics that require door knobs as part of our exit strategy.

When you don’t have a door knob, a clamp will work as well.  Or a window. Or a house elf — with or without a Ford Anglia.

Practical advice: Believe in magic. And while you wait for your Anglia or elf, make yourself a hot chocolate with marshmallows or whipped cream. Sprinkles are optional. I recommend real Hershey’s syrup with milk, but if you like those little Swiss Miss packets, go for it. Do you need to put sprinkles on your shopping list?

Zombie phrase for the day:

I always spill the sprinkles.

Ahhh uhhhuhhh bihhll duhh bihnnnguhhh.

This post title comes courtesy of a young man in a plaid shirt and backwards baseball cap that reads, “Give Life to Your Story.”  Definitely a thinning-hair hat. He’s no gansta. He’s sitting with two girls, possibly past their teen years, but not by much. They are deep in gossip about some poor woman who apparently, in the words of baseball cap guy, is “definitely not over it.”

You hear many stories sitting in Starbucks. Especially when your laptop is sitting in front of you, people seem to assume you must be deaf.  My three pseudo-companions have been hashing over this relationship struggle for nearly half-an-hour.

Baseball-hat guy may be right. If you have to say you are over it, you are definitely not over it. How did you get to the point where you made that declaration, after all? You were ruminating. You were reviewing a sad past.

Watch for these sad past moments today. Just for today, leave them alone. Don’t try to fix or change them. But keep an informal count. How many times did you return to the promotion that should have gone to you? Or any of the many other issues that task us in our daily lives?

Rumination can wreck happiness.

Life Coaching Moment: The past is dead. Evil memories of the past are dead. Bury those sons-of-bitches.  That’s easier said than done, of course, and you don’t want to discard the lessons of the past. But you can disconnect lessons from memories.

Yes, the evils of the past slip off their leashes.  Pat them on the head, then put them outside, out of sight and out of mind. Distract yourself. Go build something. Bake a cake. Start a puzzle. Read a piece of fan fiction. Or just turn on the TV.

I would want my friends in Starbucks to be discussing my first Red Velvet cake, rather than my schmuck of an ex-boyfriend. In fact, I want to be so boring that no one in Starbucks dissects my life ever.

P.S. Did you get out the comfy slippers yesterday? I did. I am wearing them now and my feet are happy.

Zombie Phrase for the Day:

I need a recipe for blood pudding.

Ahhhhh ddeeeedd uh wehhpeepohhr uhhhhd oouhhdig.

 

As we wait for the zombie apocalypse, which has been very slow in coming, we are bombarded with News. Can we make heads or tails of this stuff? Or piñatas?  I liked Putin’s assertion that the alleged Russian hacking was actually U.S. hackers attempting to frame Russia. Who the hell can prove it? Who the hell can refute it? If someone could prove it, would anyone believe them?  Another perfect addition to post-apocalyptic life without zombies.  In the meantime, I am seeking a raison d’etre for this blog. If it’s not zombies, and it’s not politics – I can’t listen to too much more news, guys – then what is it?

Should I become a reluctant, tired, wish-I-could-stay-in-bed-all-day-reading life coach?  I perceive a gap here. We have a fair number of “Rah! Rah! Let’s run another mile!” life coaches. We have many “You can meditate, I promise!” coaches. But where are the, “It’s great to make cups of tea and read paranormal romances all day!” coaches? Of course 🙆, we should be trying to get our 10,000 steps in while  going back-and-forth to make tea and then traveling back-and-forth to the bathroom, but where are the people to affirm our desire not to necessarily always improve ourselves?

Improvement should be in the eye of the beholder. Improvement should be whatever makes sense for you, whatever puts you more in touch with your essential self. Unless your essential self is a serial killer – in which case I suggest you go look up the running or meditating coaches instead.

Tip for June 7: Find the comfy slippers. Wear them for awhile today. If you have no comfy slippers, declare a Comfy Slipper Emergency! Go out and buy the soft, cushy supplies you need. Take a few moments just to enjoy the feel of your slippers.

Zombie phrase for the day (because we cannot abandon the past and must prepare for the future):

Mr. Rogers was the best.

mihhhderrrahderrr uhhhzzzz uhhhh ehddd.

 

Read More

They come. They go. Sometimes they go very fast and other people go, “What the hell?” Our resilience is being tested by current events.

Say to yourself, “Well, at least this is not the zombie apocalypse.”

I find that helps.

One less FBI director? Comey did have a few dubious moments. He may have cost Hillary Clinton the election with his ham-handed handling of the email issue. His firing might as well have been done with a bazooka, but …  They hardly snuck the guy out the backdoor in the middle of the night. In the Blue Room, we are staying tuned for further developments.

We are ignoring contradictory press statements, although we will confess to having watched Kellyanne and Anderson. Did he roll his eyes? Was that sexism? I’d say she did an amazing job of perky under a rather withering stare. If that stare withered upward, well, newsflash: Anderson does not like that girl. She will have to find someone else to take her to the prom.

Now to the news:

Nietzsche and Francisco Franco remain dead.  Nietzsche’s name remains too difficult for the average American to spell. Will we ignore this matter, another name to be lost in the dead letter office? No! Shasta the Invisible Slug and her Adoptive Mother Jocelyn see yet one more opportunity to flood the offices of our representatives in pursuit of a greater social good. Let’s tweet these representatives and their minions in search of new, linguistic clarity.

The time for a phonetic alphabet has come. Freedrick Neechee. It’s that simple.  I say we gather our foremost linguistic experts, or just a gaggle of unemployed former educators with time on their hands, and tackle this urgent issue. We are not without precedents. Think Mao-Tse-tung or Mao Zedong. Think Peking or Beijing. Why not?

My phonetic alphabet plan has to be better than watching the news.

 

 

 

Where are our Martian colonies? Where are the hardy settlers setting up shiny, silver domes and trundling across the sandy, red landscape in their special Marsmobiles? Where are the potatoes, carrots, squashes, turnips, and tomatoes grown in recycled air by brave men and women, a few of whom no doubt will be ready to kill for Whopper® or Dove® bar as the months unfold?

We are easily a quarter-century overdue at planting the flag on Mars.

But events may finally be working in favor of visionaries and would-be space travelers. What has blocked our colonies? A number of factors are in play, of course, but one major roadblock has been the alleged high expenses required to create and maintain those colonies.  The U.S. cannot afford such pricy ventures, we are told.

But that was before the POTUS!! I admit he seems to have bogged down a bit over the Mexican wall, and he has not yet convinced the South Koreans to pay for his missile defense system (or whatever he was talking about) but his concept seems sound. We get other people to  pay for what we want.  Who can disagree with such a convenient solution to economic reality?

I say, make the Koreans pay for the Martian Colonies. Make the Mexicans. And while we are at it, let’s coopt the Chinese, Russians and a few larger economies.  We will need a few big players to make my plan work. These colonies won’t come cheap and we can’t just take floo powder to Diagon Alley to get the supplies we need. (A few readers are suspecting I snorted the floo powder right now ).

But we have a big world filled with economies that are wasting their resources on day-to-day living while our Martian colonies await us. Why should we let trivial concerns such as national sovereignty stop progress? We have the POTUS!

The POTUS is bold. He is not afraid to stand up for his convictions. Frankly, he does not seem to be afraid of anybody. And he has shown he is not afraid to act.

Readers, I suggest we all Tweet the POTUS to get the Martian Colonies project off the ground.

P.S. Please share today’s biographyjar entry with friends, family and other concerned sentient creatures. My dog Ginger fully supports my plan for example, although she remains unwilling to ride a rocket.  We will probably need many thousands of Tweets to get our agenda to the forefront.

Zombie phrase for the day:  It’s a cookbook!

Ihhzzzuhhh ooogghhhhooohhhgg.