I need a t-shirt that says "This is a comedic bit, not a strongly-held belief".

Or maybe just a shirt that says "Contains 0% strongly-held beliefs". 

Other ideas: 

"Insert Coin for Comedic Rant"

"No Idea What I'm Talking About"

Just a picture of Norm Macdonald

Some kind of sensor that measures how much I'm talking and my volume and lights up a meter that says "Bullshit-ometer". Ooh, or a gauge that goes from green to red, like a tachometer. Have it read my heart rate on my smartwatch. 

It's my birthday! I'm 39 years old. I'm at work, because I didn't want to take a Wednesday off and come back to work tomorrow. I'm taking Friday off. See, this is what wisdom brings; maximizing laziness.

I just read a cool article about writing with your mind. Yes, okay, we all write with our minds but this guy is paralyzed and he just imagines handwriting each letter and the program recognizes it. I immediately imagined how this could make writing easier for me, although I doubt it. Yes, my hands are clumsy and that's annoying, but my inner monologue isn't one floating sentence. It's more like a simmering stew of language and different words bubble out of it. I'd probably end up with a bunch of my favorite words. Like one of those word clouds.

Overall I think I feel pretty okay. An old friend just announced they were expecting a child and I was extremely moved. There is hope, yet. And who needs to sleep?

Did I dream? I did. Of what? Something mundane and domestic. 

Now I want to make a word cloud of the old blog. Let's see...

Now I remember what I was thinking of when I re-read Harrison Bergeron: that we have our own brain-interrupter devices called cell phones. Switches my brain from active mode to passive mode. An interrupt. A procrastinator's' dream device. "Engagement" is what companies want to see, tiny blips of neural activity to show them that I'm now receptive to their advertisements. Create a desire, offer a way to fulfill that desire. Move on to next desire.

I was just thinking about how I got in much better shape during the pandemic, and now I'm falling out of it because I keep leaving the house to do activities. Yesterday was a good day for exercising. I hope today is a good day for it too.

I try to imagine superheroes and other various great characters who have overcome hardship as motivation. Effort, regardless of strength or ability, is a spectrum. Learning how to put forth effort in an efficient way is a skill. The fuel for that effort, the willpower or motivation, is harder for most people. Everything is a trade-off, and when the external and internal sources are in conflict, that also takes up fuel. I imagine if there was a situation where the amount of food points I earned was directly related to the amount of working out I did, I'd be great at it because I get so dang hungry. 

Tie a pizza to a string and dangle it in front of my nose; I will carry you to the ends of the earth. 

Spent part of Sunday at my mom and dad's house, eating food and cracking wise. Afterwards, I helped Ender with his English homework. Analyzing short stories. A big part of what I did was just finding better resources for him to complete it. He was given a PDF of the story and worksheet that had no text recognition on it. I typed up the questions on a worksheet he could just fill out, and then I found searchable versions of the stories. Much easier to look up specific phrases, or examples. And much easier to quote the dang quotes they ask for. 

Was a good reminder for me. School initially trains us to be workers, not so much thinkers. I get frustrated often by the lack of holistic understanding in processes because I feel instinctively that it's something overlooked by my superiors. Now I understand it's not overlooked; it's sacrificed for efficiency. In a way, as an employee or student, the higher-up is expecting us to figure out and deal with whatever issues arise in meeting the stated goal. If those setting the goals see that they're being met, why worry about how they're met. My real value is being able to perform in less-than-ideal circumstances.

I am problem-solving bot. Beep bop boop.