Brian Explains: New Year's Resolutions

New Year's resolutions come just once a year, but they can be broken all year long. I have never really participated in New Year's resolutions. I would sometimes jokingly mention that I was going to resolve to quite doing something or start doing something, but I was never seriously intending to keep the resolution. When I resolved to pickle more things one year, I gave it up after I pickled my breakfast cereal. Others have had New Year’s resolutions around me and I didn’t take their resolutions seriously either. In the next paragraph, I resolve to talk about my resolution to resolve my resolution making. Actually, I already feel like talking about something else so I will.

Resolutions come in many shapes and sizes. Some people resolve to lose weight. Others want more money or better time management skills. I may want more sex, but my wife may want less sex. We all have different goals in life. Most people just want to improve themselves in one way or another. They see the new year as a chance to reinvent themselves. I am one person today, but tomorrow I will literally and figuratively change who I am. Some people make up their New Year’s resolution ten minutes before the new year arrives. Usually, alcohol is involved in the decision and that is never a good decision making position to put yourself. The good news is that you probably won’t remember what you resolved to do in the next year anyway.

The real question is why do people make New Year’s resolutions? As with every other motivation in human existence, we are governed by fear. We fear that next year will be the same as the past year. A resolution is just that. You promise yourself something that you may keep, but probably will not. Don't resolve to do something, just do it (I am not a spokesman for Nike and resolve to never be one). Waiting until an arbitrary day to say that change is coming only cements the fact that you are not doing that thing right now. Just wake up one day and decide that this is the day you are going to change something in your life. When you say I am going to eat less fatty foods starting on the 1st of the next year that is too general. Tell yourself that today is the day you are going to dust off the treadmill and tomorrow is the day you are actually going to jog on it for ten minutes.

Your resolution changes depending on whom you are talking. Your mom doesn’t hear the “have more sex” resolution and your friends don't hear the “spend more time with your cats” resolution (unless your only friends are your cats). We mainly tell others what we think they want to hear. If your doctor tells you to eat less donuts, you tell him or her that eating less donuts is exactly what your resolution will be for the new year. Your audience informs your resolve. If you tell your friends at the local bar that you are going to quite drinking in the next year, you probably won’t be invited to any of their New Year’s Eve parties.

My basic suggestion for New Year’s resolutions is make them only if you know that you probably won’t be following them a week after New Years. Try making a new minute’s resolution. Promise to start doing the things you need to do in the next minute. Spend the next minute playing with your cats instead of sitting on your couch watching reruns of The Housewives of Alaska. My resolution for the next year is to have more decisive endings to my articles. To that end, I say squirrel.

Brian Explains: Toys

This Christmas time, I thought I would talk about an important issue that we must examine at this time of year. It is an issue that affects us all when we reach a certain age. Are we children, teenagers, young adults or the most dreaded of all – an adult? You are walking around thinking fun-filled happy toy thoughts and suddenly non-child thoughts start entering our minds. You once knew how the world worked - the one who dies with the most toys wins. Now you question who you are. You see the world differently. Before, it was obvious what was the best toy – the bigger the box, the better the toy. Now, the smaller the toy, the more money it will cost. When I was a small child, the box was my favorite toy. Just as the world changes over time, so did I.

Our perceptions when we are children change when we “grow up.” I can remember the last time I got toys for my birthday. First, I must explain one thing. My parents gave into whatever was on my mind. I didn’t like getting toys (or the dreaded clothes) that I didn’t want so I always took my parents to the toy store and picked out what I wanted. There was very little surprise involved in the process. It was the way I liked it. I was in Junior High at the time of my last “toys birthday.” I went to the toy store determined to buy or have my parents buy toys and did just that. I was a little wiser in my purchases than I had been in the past. I actually economized on the gifts. I knew I was only getting so much money for gifts so I got the smaller Star Wars Ewok vehicle instead of the larger, more expensive Ewok village. I remember thinking at the time, “I refuse to give up buying toys just because I am older. I don’t want to grow up. I want to be a kid forever. Get your wand away from me, Time!” I played with the toys so little even a year after I had gotten them that you could barely tell I had taken them out of the boxes. That little kid inside me refused to believe that getting older meant doing without toys. Toys were my life. What was I going to do with my time? This was why teenagers are so crabby. They stopped playing with toys and had nothing to do. I was becoming a crabby teenager! If this continued, I would be one of those cranky adults sitting around worrying about bills all day. The teenage years were the years that people waited to receive their bills. Your childhood was gone and toys were a forgotten memory.

As we grow up, the idea of what constitutes a toy changes. Legos and building blocks were my favorite toys as a child. Later, computer games took over my interest when I got a little older. I was a creative child and am still a creative adult. If I could create something from scratch, I could entertain myself for hours. The next step in the toy evolution is action figures. They are usually set in a certain pose. Some assembly may be required, but there is no creativity involved in building the toys. You can be creative with scripting the actions that the action figures would take, but much of the creativity of older toys gets taken out. Creativity gets suppressed as we get older because we don’t allow ourselves to be badly creative. If you ask children about specific aspects of their creations, you will get creative, but not necessarily logical answers. You need to allow yourself to create beyond sense and logic. Eventually, you can take the creative ideas and organize them into logical stories and story ideas. Every author, screenwriter, and actor was a creative child that didn’t let his or her creativity die.

When talking about toys, you have to make the distinction between girl toys and boy toys. Girl toys are boring and stupid and boy toys are interesting, creative, and great. Not that I have a bias about what toys are better, but if you look at Legos and Barbies next to each other, the difference becomes clear. Legos are a 100% creative toy where as a Barbie was an action figure with such lofty aspirations as finding a man (Ken) and getting married so she can live in the Barbie mansion. You didn’t build a car or build the house she lived in, you or your parents bought the car and house. Life was just as mundane as everyday life. The creative script of Barbie’s life had more resemblance to a soap opera than a creative exercise. My wife always complains about having to buy toys for boys. “Boys toys are so boring,” she usually yells as she rolls her eyes. Admittedly, some boys only want toys that they can destroy. I was not one of those boys. Girls also didn’t all aspire to have Barbie marry Ken. Some girls built their dollhouses, built the furniture in the house, and created the fashions for the dolls. There are creative boys as well as creative girls. For some reason, girls lose the creative aspects of childhood more than do boys. It doesn’t have to be this way, but you definitely see more men in creative jobs than women.

Creativity doesn’t have to die when we stop playing with toys. Some of us manage to keep our creativity into our adulthood and still play with toys. I still receive Legos from my wife at Christmas because I still like playing and creating. The toys I play with now are more sophisticated and expensive, but I still enjoy the simple toys the best. Give me a piece of paper and a pencil and I can create anything and everything from scratch. My creativity today has everything to do with the toys I played with as a child. If you are giving toys to someone or receiving toys this Christmas, rejoice in the fun and creativity that is growing in the world. Toys make the world a better place. Teenagers make the world a crabby toyless place with no fun or creativity. Give a teenager a toy today and make the world a better place tomorrow.

Brian Explains: Men and Women

Men and women are the same in many ways. We are both humans, have feet and hands in the same general area, and have heads that are tied to our bodies with skin string. We are so similar that you cannot tell in which category some people fit. There are a couple physical differences between women and men, but, rather than make this a sex education class with charts of ovaries, I’ll move on to the next paragraph where I will explain the meaning of Christmas . . . I mean, the difference between men and women. I will focus on the inside. No, I am not talking about the ovaries again. I am talking about the female and male brain.

If you have ever hung out with women for more than two minutes you know that they are auditory creatures. They love to talk and it is their primary form of communication to others of their kind. They also choose to communicate with the opposites of their kind in this manner. Men are visual creatures. We remember things as visual images and communicate more with visuals than do our opposites. Men can watch a movie and tell you what happened scene by scene. Women can hear a conversation and tell you exactly what was said sentence by sentence. If a man and a woman watch a crime take place in the same room, the man will notice the visual information and the woman will remember any conversations that took place. Both sides are needed to get a complete movie (with visuals and audio) of the incident.

As a child, I was bullied often enough to worry everyday about being bullied. Not that is has to be said, but my bully was usually a boy who was slightly older than I was. Girls didn’t have to deal with bullies. Most of the time when they saw a bully picking on someone, they thought it was just stupid boys that were messing with each other. Admittedly, they did have to deal with a kind of bullying. Their bullying came in the form of being socially shunned. The social shunning was worse than the bullying as far as time. A bullying would usually last a few minutes while a social shunning could go on for weeks. A very cruel trick to play on a social creature is to not speak with her. I don’t remember all the bullying that took place in my life, but most women remember when they were shunned and who shunned them.

Men are thought to be aggressive monsters who only think of sex and meat (sometimes in the same visual moment). Women are thought to be timid creatures who only think of marriage and clothing sales (always in the same auditory moment). This is as bad the stereotype as all Irish people being drunks who like to fight. As soon as I finish my Baileys, I will finish yelling at my neighbor and start on my article that disputes this stereotype. Not all women are the same and not all men are the same (except when it comes to thinking about sex). Some women act like men and some men act like women. I don’t follow any sports, but my wife loves baseball. She watches hours of TV, but I listen to hours of music and podcasts. As with any generalizations, they only work in general. For specifics, consult a specific woman or man near you. You’ll get a longer explanation from the woman, but less details from the man. Of course, I don’t know these things for sure because I only heard most of this stuff from others. It just sounded like “blaa, blaa, blaa” to me most of the time. Probably some woman was talking about it.

Brian Explains: Hoarding

Stop Hoarding the Insanity

If you haven't seen any of the shows about hoarding, you owe it to yourself to watch one. The basic premise of every show is that the person who the show is about cannot let go of things. "Things" include both physical and emotional things. It is the emotional baggage that compels them to keep the physical things. In other words, they are psychologically damaged. In other other words, those people are nuts. This is the part of the show that you owe it to yourself to watch. You feel much better about yourself because these people are so much worse than you.

Just as I have a little OCD, I think I exhibit some of the tendencies of those who hoard. My wife and I recently went through our future family room to clear it out so we could actually use it someday. We were definitely hoarders in that room. Part of the definition of a hoarder is having to clear a path through your stuff so you can walk. We fit that definition. Most of the items were junk that we just threw out. We still need to go through the rest of it and make more room in the room in order to consider it a room we would use as a functional room. Do you room what I’m saying?

When I was a kid, I would save the boxes from my toys. I still have some of the boxes and many of the toys. I understand why people want to keep objects that mean something to them. I’ve gone through the boxes of my childhood memories and had hours of reminiscing about the toys and other objects that took me right back to those more innocent and simpler times. Memories are merely the objects of your mind. You can store as many objects as can fit in your head and you don’t have to create a walking path. When I look at the objects of my childhood, I don’t think about the objects themselves. I think about the memories that those objects bring up in my mind. I can throw away the physical objects easily, but it would take one of those memory erasers from Men in Black to lose my memories.

My dad was a definite hoarder. He would save coffee cans, tissue boxes, toilet paper centers, Styrofoam, Atari 2600 video game consoles and games, enough 3-½ inch floppy disks to tile a roof, and boxes of assorted paper. He had reasons in his mind for keeping all of these objects. Admittedly, he would at some point actually use many of the objects he kept. One of my friends asked my dad if he had a couple coffee cans to use as drums in a percussive composition we were working on. My dad disappeared for a couple minutes and came back with 10-15 various sizes of coffee cans. It was a proud day for my dad. All the years he spent collecting those coffee cans was worth it. When we had to clear out my parents’ house, I had to clean out all of these objects. If nothing else, don’t become a hoarder for your children’s sake.

Hoarding is not something that is apparent to people unless they visit the hoarder’s house. It is a hidden disease like alcoholism. Only family and close friends know about what goes on behind the front door of their house. If your parents or other family members are hoarders, go to them now before it gets too late. If you wait too long, you are going to be the one who has to clean up after them. If you are the hoarder yourself, start throwing crap away now before it is too late.

Brian Explains: OCD

Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is defined by Merriam-Webster as a “psychoneurotic disorder in which the patient is beset with obsessions or compulsions or both and suffers extreme anxiety or depression through failure to think the obsessive thoughts or perform the compelling acts.”  I don’t mean to brag, but I have several forms of OCD.  One form of OCD that I have is the ordering the items in my kitchen sink.  The last sentence was the teaser for the next paragraph.  I really should have ended with that sentence and come back next week with an article that continues the setup.  That would make this week’s Brian Explains Life article just a tad short so I will go ahead and continue the story in the next paragraph.  Besides, with these added sentences, I feel I have teased you enough.

And now, the much anticipated paragraph where I explain how I organize my kitchen sink.  The left side of the sink is the inbox.  Whatever is going in the sink starts there.  Usually, I just use that side of the sink to wash off the dishes, etc., of any debris on them.  They are then placed dry and in order on the right side of the sink.  What is the proper order of items on the right side?  That’s a very good and important question and I am glad I asked it.  When you put cups in the sink, the forks, spoons, and knives get put inside them.  Dishes get placed on their side in ascending order from smallest to largest with the larger dishes being on the edge of the sink.  The largest bowls or containers get placed on the bottom of the sink with subsequently smaller bowls or containers placed on top.  Container lids or other large flat items (like a cutting board) should be placed on their side in the back of the sink.  You might have more of one type of item so you will have to perform Tetris-like moves to get them all to work together.

If others in your household do not follow the steps in the past paragraph, it is best to freak out and tie them to a chair so you can explain the whole process to them.  I have never actually done this when my wife, Patti, ignores my rules, but I show my disdain to her actions by rolling my eyes and correcting the horrendous sink faux pas by placing the items in the sink myself.  Patti has her own form of OCD.  One form has to do partially with the sink.  If I take a knife out of the drawer and I meant to take a spoon, I cannot put the knife back in the drawer even if I only raised it a few inches out of the drawer.  It has been contaminated by the outside the drawer air.  You have to put it in the sink unused (in a cup, of course).  And don’t get me started on how she eats.  Well, since I already began talking about it, I will set forth the rules of a proper dinner plate.  All food items must be separated by enough space for the food to not touch.  Food must be eaten in order and one item at a time.  If you have spaghetti and meatballs, the spaghetti must be eaten first and then the meatballs.  The best meal for her would be separate plates for each item.

I would like to apologies to my wife for the last paragraph.  Everything I have said was true, but I shouldn’t include her in my explanation of a psychological disorder.  I should only use myself and other people I don’t know as examples.  Celebrities are always good targets.  Speaking of which, here are a list of celebrities and their OCD activities:

• Howard Hughes became a recluse and wore tissue boxes on his feet near the end of his life, becoming a social recluse.
• Howie Mandel cannot shake hands with anyone due to mysophobia (the fear of dirt and germs).  He bumps his fist with people instead of shaking hands.  I call him a germaphobe.  I’ll explain germaphobes in another article, but not in the middle of a list of celebrities with OCD.
• Howard Stern could not turn on his car radio without tapping the dial a certain number of times with his right hand.

I could name other celebrities with OCD, but I have a form of OCD that only allows me to list people who are named Howard.  I think we all have some form of OCD in our lives.  There are many disorganized and chaotic parts of life that need to be put in check somehow.  Our mind wants to control the world, but it cannot.  OCD is the mind’s attempt to control the world.  It is considered a disorder because controlling the world is a fantasy.  You can’t control the world so you overly control yourself.  Just as I can’t control my wife, I realize I can only control my own behavior.  I will now use my control over this article before it becomes too much like a life lesson.  I don’t want to become the afterschool special of the blog article world so I will end this article in the next sentence.  I don’t really have anything to say in this sentence, but I set it up as the last sentence so here is one last thing I have to say.