Mornings

This post is going to look more like a diary entry than an educated rant.

I was painting an apartment through this morning and early afternoon. It's a task I perform now and again for our landlord, who graciously deducts a bit from our rent as payment and goodwill. It has allowed us to keep a healthy and respectful relationship with the man who could kick us out on a whim and has served as a nice supplement to income. Besides that, I like doing it.

The apartment that I'm currently painting for him is the...maybe the 6th one I've done for him. Considering how small the complex is, thats actually a huge number. The funny thing is, the first time I painted an apartment for him, I had never done any painting before in my life. He gave me a quick lesson, offered some advice upon my calling him for Q&A and then inspected it with me there once I was done. The first couple of times he gave me some advice on what to do next time, general tips for speedy work and other such words of wisdom.

Now that I have become more comfortable with the task, I can actually think about OTHER things while I am painting. It has become something that I can be relatively at ease about (though I wouldn't call myself even an amatuer by any stretch). So today I was thinking. Why do I read the news so much?

Ever since I moved to Pennsylvania, I have been reading the news everyday. Quite a bit of my reading is tech news (my favorite) but it is almost always supplemented by business news, U.S. News and politics. I will read basically anything on the internet that classifies itself as "news". And this is something that I have only been doing since I have been married in the state of PA. Until today I hadn't really thought about WHY.

Listening to the podcasts that I do, Car Talk, What the Tech, A Life Well Wasted, The Game Informer Show, The Motley Fool, 60 Minutes, Truth for Life and Focus on the Family, I noticed that I often dream while I am listening to these shows. When I'm listening to cartalk, I carefully soak in the facts that are communicated to the callers about what could be wrong with their cars and how nice it will be when I finally know how to fix them myself. In What the Tech, I carefully listen about the occasional conversation that takes place about programming languages and operating systems. Listening to Game Informer, I wonder about how hard it would be to actually make a simple game, like something that would look like it came from the original Nintendo or even the old Atari systems. Then when I listen to general radio shows like 60 Minutes I think about how fun it would be to have my own podcast and interview people. That would rock.

But mostly when I am at home and I have nothing pressing to be doing I will just read the news. and today I finally realized it: It's because I don't have a constructive hobby. Back when I first got married I wanted to the be best man that I could be for my wife: I wanted to get up extra early every morning so I could get an early start on the day and get loads of stuff done before she even had a chance to wake up. But the fact was that all I could do was write. I could work on my book, write poetry, maybe do some blog work. The thing is, our apartment is so small that when I type on the keyboard (something I am exceptionally loud at...and proud of.) It would wake her up. In addition to the waking, it is a sound that also annoys the snot out of her. So unless I was willing to sit outside or go to some coffee shop (we aren't close enough to one to justify it...and I ain't sitting in the grass with a laptop. That's lame.) doing any kind of writing on the computer is out of the question. At the time I was writing some letters to friends and loved ones, but in this age it is both uncommon and inconsistent to receive a timely reply. So it's not something I could do every morning.

I think at one point, I decided I would just get up early, have some ME time and goof around on the internet. Aside from facebook and youtube, basically the only other thing you can do on the net that doesn't involve typing is reading the news. And so i developed the terrible addiction of being a news junkie. My wife pointed this out to me just a few weeks back. But it actually soaked in today.

If I actually took my mornings and focused; if I woke up with the purpose of doing something constructive, I'm willing to bet this bad habit could be broken very easily. Hopefully when we get to Texas, Amber and I will be able to get a two bedroom apartment, where I can close the door of the second bedroom and get some writing done without disturbing her. Or maybe I could learn to program, or record and edit sound, or write games? For those who are willing to wake up in the morning, there is a whole world of opportunity to be seized before 10 A.M.