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Transcript
- I Know You’re Tired… Howdy,-ho! Howdy-ho!!! Welcome to your Wednesday, what's happening? Welcome to another episode of WANZOLOGY! I am your host, The Wanz, and I am getting ready for the, the fall, the autumn, you know, the, the, the shorter days, what I call the dark times, they are upon us y'all. And I realized that you may be extremely burnt out from all that you've been through this year, and it doesn't really matter if you've been at it for a week, a month, a year, five years. Burn out can happen. Some days you just feel it more so than others. You can't stay directed, you can't stay on task, you can't keep the faith and belief that you're doing exactly what you need to be doing at this juncture, and that's okay. It happens to everybody. What do you do when you're starting to run low as, uh, Jackson Brown would say when you're: “Runnin’ long, runnin’ on empty. Running long, runnin’ blind!”, what do you do? What do you do? Well, I have a couple of suggestions because that's what I do here on WANZOLOGY, I give you a little perspective based on what my experience has been. My experience has been, man, it's so easy to get tired and run down even in the course of just a day, just a whole day. There's like an hour, two hours, sometimes longer, where I'm just feeling like, what the hell am I doing this for? My go-to defense is to watch television and I will sit down and park my ass on the couch and just scroll and watch TV and look at social media, but what always happens is later, when I have passed the point of, “Boy, I really should be doing something and so let's pick something.”, I feel guilty because that's not what I did. I chose to sit and wait because my experience is if I sit and I wait, usually life will show me a new path. Life will give me the inspiration, the direction, the wherewithal, to think of an alternative way of going about things, if I'm patient. B ut I have to be patient.0 Well, what happens in the meantime while I'm being patient waiting for something to happen? That's the hard part. What do you do in the meantime? Like I said, I, I will watch television or, I will pick up a guitar and start trying to learn how to play something or, I will go in the kitchen and make something to eat if I'm hungry or, I will go outside and take a walk listening to an audiobook or . ‘Cause Lord knows, when you're unemployed you have tons of things to do, like I do. I'm trying to start a new business venture. There's graphics and all sorts of descriptors and little press releases that I could make when I'm thinking of it. Thing is I'm not always thinking of it. There are songs, I have so many songs and backlog. I could be working on those. I could be recording another episode of WANZOLOGY, like I am now, but there's always something. Did you make your bed today? Have you tried to do laundry? How about have you vacuumed or dusted or gone through your clothes to decide, well, all these summer clothes I'm not gonna wear again, so I'm gonna make room for next summer or for fall or whatever. There's always something. It's just a matter of what you choose. I have always said the problem and the solution with human beings is always choice. You have control of everything on the inside of your skin, but what exactly to do with all that power? Hmm. What do you do? Okay. Now there are some who subscribe to making lists. They make more lists than I can possibly count having to do with bucket list things or tasks to do around the house, or if I was bored, I would, and then they put stuff down on their list. And they have like multiple lists, which I tried to do. Only problem was, I would forget where the list was or to look at the list or to add things to the list or would just do things and then forget to take stuff off of the list. I'm not a good list person and that's fine. As Clint Eastwood has said, at the end of Magnum Force, “A man's GOT to know his limitations.”, I am well aware of what I can and cannot do. I can't go back in time. I can't change what's going to happen considering I have no idea what's going to happen. So I'm stuck here, as we all are, in the present. And the obvious question is, “Well, what are you gonna do?” Pick something. Doesn't matter what it is. I live alone. I know almost every single square inch of my abode because I've walked back and forth through it many times, contemplating the very question of what do I do next? And I've done it for minutes, sometimes hours, and just kind of Fiddle-Faddle. You know what Fiddle-Faddle means? Fiddle-Faddle was this candied popcorn stuff, sort of like cracker jack, but different. The name Fiddle-Faddle just kind of means diddling, just doing kinda like if you had a pencil in your hand or a pen and a blank sheet of paper, you'd just be drawing lines on it. Not really drawing anything at all. That's a process called doodling. Well, the mind doodling, I call fiddle fat when my mind goes into Fiddle-Faddle mode. It's like looking in the refrigerator and nothing sounds good to eat. Looking at the movie schedule, nothing sounds good to go see. Scrolling through Instagram, nothing looks appealing and no one jumps out that really you can converse with or interact with or whatever. But here's the thing, what you will always have is choice. So just because something didn't work out the first time you chose it doesn't mean that it's the only thing you're gonna choose, number one and number two, doesn't mean that's the last thing you'll get a shot at choosing. As long as you're drawing breath, you have an opportunity. You just have to figure out how to get out of your own way and select an opportunity. Don't think so. I really appreciate that you're listening to this podcast right now 'cause you could have chosen to do anything else. If you were at home and you're listening to it on ear pods and stuff, you could be listening to this while cleaning the toilet. Or if you're in your car, you could be at a stoplight or on the freeway stuck in traffic or a myriad, of other things. The fact is, is that listening to me right now is the result of a choice you made somewhere in the past, and believe me, I appreciate that choice. But what's next? I mean, you could multitask and like I said, have your earbuds in and you could be doing some other things. Folding laundry for all I know, I don't know. Your life has lots of things in it, and I am unaware of what they are. I'm just speaking from my perspective. There is always something to do, it's just a matter of having the wherewithal and the ‘gumption’ (that's an old person's word), ‘gumption’, to do it! And if it doesn't get done, can I come back to it later or do I just leave it where it is? My father was kind of a pack rat in the sense that he rarely ever got rid of anything and used to have piles of papers. Some were bills, some were notes, recipes or reminders, I dunno. I never wanted to be like that. So it was disappointing about 20 years ago when I figured out my place is cluttered and it's piles of paper everywhere. Little ones, big ones, mail from like a week ago. Why don't I just, why don't I recycle that stuff? I dunno why. I just don't shred it. I keep telling myself I'll get to it later because I'm in the middle of doing whatever I'm doing right now. Well, after a few hours, a few days a week, there's piles of stuff everywhere, and it's discouraging for me because I never wanted to be like that. I remember when one of my kids was living with me. I tried to encourage him to clean as you go. A lesson that I learned from my very first job at McDonald's. Clean as you go. Little did I realize that cleaning as I go was very complicated in the sense that I don't always feel like doing it. Maybe you're not like me. Maybe you are not your own worst enemy. Maybe, you've got all these things together in a system that works for you. Great! Document that system, pass it around to people and if they can replicate your system, sell that! That's how McDonald's got started. Ray Crock developed a system of creating hamburgers and it is still in operation today. And anybody could, if you have the money, you can go buy a franchise store and you'll learn all of Ray Kroc's secrets from way back in the fifties, sixties, early sixties. I believe that system has been replicated in who knows how many different industries. So if you have a system and it works for you. Why, uh, why not refer to that when you're looking around for your choice? I know you're tired. You've been doing this a while, this ‘living’ thing, this ‘existence’, this ‘life’. You've been doing it for a while, but I like the fact that you've made it this far. Do you appreciate that? Do you appreciate how far you've made it and what you've gone through to make it here? Some people don't make it this far, and I don't care if you're 12, 20, 50, 90 if you're listening to this right now, some people don't have that opportunity because they are no longer on this plane. They are no longer alive, but you are. You are here right now. So what are you gonna do? What are you going to try? Because if you try, you'll figure out whether you do or do not. Yoda's logic is flawed. Yoda says, “No! Do or do not? There is no try!” Sorry, you never find out whether you can or can't do something until after you try to do something. Want a great example? Let's talk potty training. Do you mess up potty training still? You have to wear a diaper every day, every hour of every day, like when you were a baby? No. Because you learned how to relieve yourself properly under many different circumstances, too. It's kind of funny now, isn't it? Oh crap, I've gotta go. I've gotta go. I've gotta go. Well, you're not gonna we your pants. You've got so much better at potty training over the moments that you've been alive and doggone it. I would say at this point you are an expert. You've reached that level of Jumanji!! Now, what about other things? When's the last time that you put food on a fork and couldn't put it in your mouth? When's the last time you couldn't button a shirt? When's the last time you had no idea how to count money to pay for something? When's the last time, . Fill it in with something that you do all the time. The simple things, walking, sitting, talking. When's the last time you failed at any of these things? And you've been doing them a long time, so I get it that you're tired. Life can be monotonous. Every single day. Ends in why, and I've come to the conclusion that that's the question. Doesn't matter if it's Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, It ends in why? Why am I doing this? The best answer? Because. Because I can!! Or as Neo says in, uh, the third Matrix movie, Smith asks him, “Mr. Anderson, why, why, why do you persist?! And Neo says, “Because I choose to.” You have so much power and so much privilege. It may not be as much as some, but it's definitely more than others. And to use it to your advantage to get better at using it, you have to employ it. You have to be better at evaluating the last choice that you made so that you can possibly make a better choice next time. And as long as you're breathing, I like the chances of there being a next time. I know you're tired. It's okay to rest. It's okay to step aside and let life pass you by, but only for a little while. Just like me., you have things you wanna do, people you want to see, places you want to go. Just sitting around, none of those things are gonna happen, so you have to do something. If it's positive, meaning that you're doing something towards whatever the goal is, going somewhere, seeing somebody doing some things, whatever the goal is, if you're putting a little bit of effort going there, well that's better than where you were. I like your chances. I like your chances because now you realize how much you've done. Be proud of yourself. Like I said, some folks don't make it this far. I'll leave you with this. Let this little concept swirl around in your mind for a little while: It's not about success or failure. It's having the opportunity to try. So do your best and leave the rest. I'll say that again, do your best, then leave the rest. Pretty simple, might not be that easy though. Okay? Thanks again for listening. I really do appreciate you, take care of yourself. Ciao for now.