Not Enough Time

A year or so ago I did something I had never done before. I turned off a movie my wife and I had rented after 15 minutes because it stunk and had limited possibility of redeeming itself. My wife and I now have established this as a regular practice. Should a movie enter the danger zone, one of us will say, “10 minute rule.” We give the movie 10 minutes to improve or we turn it off. Only rarely has a movie not been turn off after reaching this point. I have not regretted not finishing the other movies.

I used to finish any movie I rented because I had paid for it and didn’t want to waste my money. And I had this optimistic side of me that thought any movie could be good.

Now that I’m older, I’m less concerned with wasting money and more concerned with wasting time.

A few weeks ago, I employed the same tactic with a library book I was reading. I gave it 10 pages to improve and it actually got worse. So, I just stopped reading it. Since then I’ve done that with 2 other books. I’m not to the point that I’d do that with a book I’ve purchased (I’ll put one of those bad ones down for awhile, but I usually will go back and finish it at some point), but it’s real progress towards living well.

Life is too short for bad movies and books. And bad chocolate, but that’s another post.

There was a time when I was more than happy to share my life with complete strangers on the Internet.

I’m not sure when it changed, but it has. I mentioned a stalker in my last post–that’s always a good reason to stop doing something that attracts those people. I never did do IRC again after some crazy chick did a lookup on my IP address and somehow figured out what dorm and room I lived in my freshman year in college. This time it also involved a crazy chick. I’m not a chick magnet, but apparently if they’re crazy I’m golden.

Of course, once your married, that whole chick magnet aspect is not very appealing or funny.

And that’s where I am now. I’m not really sure what I should write about here. I have many interests and ideas you might want to hear, but I’m not that interested in feedback or sharing them. So why even have a blog?

I ask myself that question every time I get the urge to post. I don’t have a good answer for it.

Well, my other blog has bitten the dust.

After 2 years, constant theme changes, and a few retirements, I decided it was time to go underground.

Amazingly, I had a core group of visitors that put up with my testiness and kept coming back.

I’ll miss most of them, but not the psycho stalker.

So, why am I doing this now?  I stopped blogging because I didn’t feel I did it often enough to pay for it and because I didn’t feel like I could say what I wanted.  Too many people on there knew who I was in real life.  And my hosting was only $5, but it was wasted the last few months.

I tried Vox for a bit, but I invited too many people to that who knew me and I didn’t really like it that much.  WP kicks ass, and frankly I had forgotten I even had this account.

I can’t say this will be updated very often and I don’t really care if anyone visits.  If something comes up that I *must* blog, now at least I have a place to do that.

I’m leaving soon for a vacation with the family.  We’ve rented a cabin in Tennessee.  I have no idea what we’ll do, but I do know that one of my favorite places (Asheville, NC) is only 2 hours away.

So, fear not if there are no updates for the next week.  I shall return for sure. 

I’m embarrassed to say I actually downloaded the new Flock browser just for the free WordPress.com account.  I’m glad I did, however, since I probably wouldn’t have otherwise tried out Flock until later.  Definitely nifty.

The larger question is, “Why another blog?”  Free blogs have sort have become the new free email account–it seemed like I used to sign up for a million free email accounts for no good reason.  I know there’s probably a few I never even logged into once.

But that’s beside the point because I actually do have a good reason this time.  All the other blogs I’ve set up use a certain nickname that’s pretty unique and known by several people who know me.  In addition to those people, my blogs got a lot of other traffic–enough that I wasn’t real excited about talking about my real life much.  And that kind of sucks because that’s mostly what a blog is for.

So there’s a little freedom here to be me and not have some of the other things I’ve blogged about be connected to this one.  I like that idea.

My name is Andrew.  How do you do?