Today has been quite unpleasant. Something is definitely “up” with my health. I am not well.
First off, I have been going through one of my sleepy periods lately, which is never fun. The usual crapola, super intense dream filled sleep which leaves me more tired and drained than I was before I slept.
But today, when I woke up around noonish, I felt just awful. I had this terrible ache throughout my body which made me feel like every muscle was pulled tight and yet every joint was rusted in place.
In addition to that, I had a splitting headache and was feeling distinctly dizzy and disoriented.
So far, my self-diagnosis is that I was experiencing a combination of sinus pain from blocked up sinuses (and ears), and being pretty badly dehydrated.
Which brings up another thing. I am going through a lot of liquids (and peeing) lately. I think it is mostly attributable to it being hotter now and thus I am going through a lot of sweat. (Eww.) But when you are a diabetic like I am, you learn to watch for things like unusually high thirst levels.
And I have just not felt healthy lately. A lot of little things, like my wrists getting stiff and sore (really messes with my sex life), chronic headaches, my back hurting more than usual, that kind of thing.
God damn it, I might just be getting old. Apparently, my plan to be so unhealthy that I wouldn’t even notice getting old is not working.
That was a joke, folks. Relax.
And I have had this little periods before and I always pull out eventually. Even this afternoon, I felt a lot better after throwing myself into my Facebook games for a while. I think the effort involved helps use up some of the excess energies left in my brain by all that dreaming.
Who knows, that might just become my motivation to exercise. Long term plans are one thing. Just plain trying to not feel so fucking tense is quite another.
We fucked up human animals respond a lot better to immediate rewards than long-term ones, even when we know better. That’s why I think the difference between people who succeed and people who end up in the wastebasket of life like me is that the successful people learn to take immediate pleasure in all steps required to achieve their long-term goals.
It is all about what you find rewarding. “Willpower” is a myth. If you can quit smoking when others cannot, it is not because you have a will of steel, it is because you find knowing that you are on your way to being smoke free pleasurable enough that you do not want to disrupt it by smoking.
It is about the ability to find pleasure in life, not willpower.
But to the midnset of a modern consumer capitalist, raised to use consumption as the cure of all ills, this seems like cheating somehow. You are not supposed to have to find more pleasure in things. You are supposed to find more things to give you pleasure!
But really, wouldn’t it be better to be a happy person no matter what the circumstances? Or are we such slaves to the consumer mindset that we would turn down eternal happiness if it did not also come with a large cash prize?
What else. Oh yeah, today is the big day : Arrested Development Season 4 Day, which I am choosing to call Frozen Banana On A Stick day. The much delayed and almost desperately anticipated new season of Arrested Development is available on Netflix, and my friends and I will be getting together tonight to watch an episode or two.
Needless to say, we are stoked. We are huge, huge fans of the show, as all right-minded and intelligent people are (try it, it’s a very good test!), and we were pretty bummed out when the show was canceled all those years ago.
So the fact that Netflix is using some of the boodles of cash it is making to produce their own content (wow, what a great new business model for TV!), and some of that content is an all new season of Arrested Development, has got us all pretty excited.
But because we are also fairly neurotic, we are also pretty worried. What if it sucks? What if it’s not as good as the original three seasons? What if they ruin it? And so forth and so on.
So going in to this experience with a high level of anticipation and dread. In other words, we are going into it like all neurotic people go into potentially positive things.
No wonder I get so tense. It’s like a freaking neurosis farm in this skull of mine.
In order to buffer ourselves a little against the potential risk tonight’s Arrested Development debut entails, we are going to get some treats. Some fried chicken, a cake, other goodies. That way we can either use the food to celebrate or to drown our sorrows, depending on how it goes.
Regardless, I hope that having Season Four of AR on the service draws tons more people onto Netflix. The more subscribers they have, the more money they will have to either purchase or produce content, and that sounds great to a dedicated Netflix fan like me.
I mean, it’s eight freaking bucks a month and you get access to tons of awesome content, all available almost instantaneously and in as large a quantity as you can watch.
And yet, from Netflix’s point of view, a million subscribers is eight million bucks per month. That is way, way more than it costs to maintain the robust Internet presence required for such a service.
If it wasn’t for the fact that content owners are now charging them through the nose for content, Netflix would be a massively profitable business.
Then again, that’s what created the opening for them to create their own content. If AMC is going to charged them up the yingyang for Mad Men, it might just be cheaper for them to produce their own shows.
And if they are the right shows, it will work.
Next show I hope they resurrect : Better Off Ted. After that : Greg the Bunny!