Make Yo Life Bettah

Okay so I'm hoping I can make regular posts on this new idea: MYLB - Make Your Life Better. What's that you ask? Well it's a simple idea. I ask myself: What recurring problems can I take care of right now? And sometimes I ask myself: Is this really working, or do I need to try a new approach? For me its important to really break things down right now, so I hope you don't mind going for the ride.

I wanted to talk about the difference between undesirable and dysfunctional. I'm thinking of undesirable things as things that have short term solutions such as being hungry, needing gas in your car, or being late to an appointment after work. Easy solutions would be to stop and buy something to eat, stop and get gas, and speed to your appointment if you were already running late. Alternate solutions would be to stop and eat the lunch you brought from home, take a short cut to your appointment, and get gas on the way back.

Now when I say dysfunctional, I'm talking more about things that are either recurring, or interrelated. If you're always late to your appointments it would only be logical to either leave earlier, or schedule your appointments on a non-work day. Or maybe when you're hungry you have a habit of spending ten bucks on a greasy burger combo that just makes you feel tired & unproductive, on top of burning a hole in your budget. Then you might consider saving the $10 to buy groceries to pack yourself a healthier and less expensive lunch. Maybe you have a problem of not noticing how low your gas tank gets through the week because of a combination of being pressed for time at every turn, making multiple trips to get food, to go back to the office, to get to appointments, as well as speeding from place to place effectively expending more gas than you need to or want to. Oh and you're spending $10 a day on burger combos that make you feel tired and forgetful, and besides that was your last $10 so now you have nothing to get gas--guess you'll have to wait till next paycheck.

Its really easy to fix the undesirables, but to fix the dysfunctionals we have to really pay attention to how things are related and what common results we get from typical decisions. I hope this is all helpful food for thought.

And now this made me smile



http://www.thefoodinmybeard.com/2009/06/green-mac-and-cheese.html - Is an extravagant macaroni & cheese casserole that will make you think of a famous Dr. Seuss Book.

this made me smile too:

Watch Hammerdance videos and dance lessons at DanceJam.com

http://abduzeedo.com/29-amazing-long-exposure-pictures - Is a treasure trove of some of the most beautiful contributions to slow-shutter photography.

I finished reading Kid Amazo, got through the Fragile Creature storyline of the Concrete book, and watched 2 episodes of Mushi-shi (not bad). Of the others One Bad Rat and Tarnished Angel did not disappoint. Chunky Rice was delightfully ephemeral. That pick was definitely the solo-protagonist show. Next up I've got Leave it To Chance Book 1, Ultimate Iron Man Vol. 1, and Mister X (ooooooOOOoohhh). One of these days I'm going to draft (or re-draft I should say) a wishlist of graphic novels I want to read. This year I've made progress through Bone, Starman, Sandman, Zot!, AstroCity, and others. I am admittedly a comic-book uber geek whose just missed a decade or so of good readin'.

Also I occasionally have time to sketch and doodle on post-it notes or index cards that I have laying around. What we have here is (going clockwise from top left)

1. A spider-man inspired expression of someone else's bullshit
2. impressions of dealing with a day, probably exacerbated by aforementioned b.s.
3. a sad retrospective of the corny Jim Lee inspired drawings I used to do in junior high; this guy is content to have the ridiculously unidentifiable skull of some beast on his head,
4. a self-portrait from my driver's license in which i've given myself an extra 5lbs. in the face and the calloused appearance of someone facing time in the joint.