Birthday 2012

It started as a cloudy day. I could never remember a time when my birthday was ever so cloudy, or showing any aspect of possible rain. There were cooler days, yes, but I’ve never noted it starting out with such a gloomy, somber looking sky until now. Thankfully, it ended up getting warmer and brighter for the afternoon.

I woke up this morning feeling like I’ve finally shaken off the last vestiges of the insomnia and spells of mental malaise/fogginess, and headaches that I get after doing a night shift. I feel reasonably re-energized; the problem is though that I don’t know where to direct such energy. I have a couple days off. As uneventful and unceremonious as my birthday has usually been, I try to make a point to not work through it. Conveniently for me, it usually falls on the week of the Labour Day holiday, and I use the stat time in lieu of a work day, or else the following day after. It has never been a big deal for anyone else to note while I was growing up, as the day falls in a time when folks usually are too involved with other business that occurs at this part of the year. It always coincided with the full swing of harvest season when I lived rurally, and during the beginning of the back to school season when the return to regular affairs becomes more of a priority.

With my energy renewed; I had no desire to spend the day cooped up indoors, despite the dullness outside. So, I packed up my laptop and went mobile. Since there was no coffee left in my kitchen, I scurried over to the Broadway Roastery where there’s Wi-Fi, to at least plot out something meaningful to do, if not to just simply reflect on things. The only gifts I’ve received so far through the day were a few pennies I found on the ground*, and some lotto tickets that were sent to me by mail, which were unfortunately losers. However, I did tie into a book that a friend of mine gifted to me much earlier in the year during the process of her move. It’s called Getting Things Done, by David Allen. It’s a book that I wish was available to me years ago. Even through a cursory perusal of it, I scribbled out and generated at least fifty questions afterward that I thought were relevant to me for which I thought I needed to have answered. It’s a massive project in itself to take time to find these answers. It was a significant book for me to read for today because of its heavy emphasis on a sense of mission and vision.

To turn another year older without any sense to become a better sort of person than what one currently is, in my mind, is absolutely foolish. I’ve already started taking some steps to accord with a personal advancement yesterday. I decided to do away entirely with services that I just find to be too wasteful, like my LAN line and cable TV. My LAN line number gets more telemarketer calls (despite being registered with the GOC do-not-call list) than personal ones. Why then should I pay for this hassle? As for my digital cable TV, I never find time to watch it, and when I do, even with an extra two hundred channels, I never find anything worthwhile to watch, or follow, in terms of a series. I have better things to do for myself than to squander away my time this way, even with the coming of winter. I did not miss it at all throughout the summer months, and I’m confident that I could do without it through this winter as well. I can select and catch up on news and programming on the web, and filter through the video of stories that may be of interest to me better, at a time of my convenience.

In general, I find myself to be over-inundated with media. I’m tired and sickened of all the bad news I hear. When that happens, we aren’t allowed to think for ourselves, nor do we become more genuine, authentic personalities when we are only given news stories that strike fear and loathing in us. The worst culprit is television, because it involves all your basic audio-visual senses: I can easily skip over the commercial advertizing in a newspaper, but I can’t with TV, not without having to peck at buttons on a PVR. I figured if I took the more of the visual stimuli away, more of my attention would be freed to focus on other tasks.

I’m on the search for meaningful interests, and things to set into skills and habits to use to substitute for that wasted time. I toured the SPL (Saskatoon Public Library) to do such a thing. I dragged home a huge pile of these primitive things called magazines**, some audiobooks to listen to at bedtime, and other non-fiction books of related to subjects of my curiosity. I can putter around home doing more validating work, or to craft other things, while listening to educational and informative podcasts as well.

So far, my work schedule still confines me to doing more solitary, introverted activities (God willing, that will soon change too). Along with continuing to heal myself, and finding more efficient ways to maintain a runner’s conditioning over winter without slipping and wiping out on ice (weight-training and treadmill running), the things I’d like to devote more attention to learning and improving on throughout the course of fall and winter are: programming, writing, woodcrafts, DIY home improvements, culinary skills, investment/fiscal management, advanced mathematics, language acquisition, playing guitar, and perhaps do some formal course work with SIAST.

The greatest gift I’m giving to myself for this birthday is the courage to gain some clarity of mind to attain my own standard of personal rectitude.

*- Gifts from God I suppose. I always pick up coins, even pennies, I find on the street. Not out of superstition, certainly not because I believe the few cents I find this way will make me wealthy, nor is it done out of desperation, but to keep me mindful that abundance is potentially everywhere, and to keep me hopeful that opportunities will appear someday to help serve me better.

**- Ebooks, web sites, and epub files are almost bringing proper paper magazine publications to the brink of extinction. My choices are health, science, and tech mags (Wired, PC World, Men’s Health, National Geographic, Popular Mechanics, and Popular Science