i haven’t written anything in a few days. i sat down to write tonight, but my tiredness is catching up with me. i did manage to post a picture on the main kettlepot.com site, which is good although i’m finding that none of my recent pictures really says anything to me. i think they still fit as technical experience, but that’s about it.

i really should write more. this week has been…interesting. so many ups and downs. i went to the burgundy and white game last night, which was an up. hockey season is always awesome. but work is a downer for a lot of reasons that i won’t get specific about tonight. i reconnected with a friend, which was both up and down. i’m going to chicago to see some other friends, which is definitely an up.

i’m really distracted tonight, so i’m going to cut this post short. i need a vacation.

bonus points if you know where the title of this post comes from without looking it up.

another show on the dave list…dead like me. here is the plot summary from IMDB:

Meet Georgia Lass (who prefers to be called George). She is a young Seattle college dropout who is unhappy with life. She is always at odds with her mom, Joy. One day coming back from her temp job as a filing clerk, she is hit by the toilet seat of the re-entering Space Station Mir. Finding out she is now dead, she is recruited to become a grim reaper. As in life, she is a pain in the butt in death. She does not like the details of her job, and is always at loggerheads with her boss Rube. Her fellow grim reapers don’t really take much of a liking to her either. She also learns grim reapers don’t even get a free ride in death, as they must hold down regular jobs along with their death duties.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348913/

the show was originally on showtime and only lasted two seasons. personally, i think it fits in the “brilliant but cancelled” category.

i write tonight because of a specific episode which aired tonight on the sci fi channel, which is currently re-airing the two seasons. the episode is entitled “vacation”. the reapers find themselves on a holiday where no one is scheduled to die so they use the time to catch up on some paperwork. the paperwork involves the cataloging of the last thoughts of the people that died. the categories turn out to be ones such as should have, could have, would have. pet regrets, past regrets.

there are two parts of this episode that draw my attention. the first one involves a dialog between georgia, the main character, and daisy, another reaper. through most of the episode, daisy is relating her many “conquests” of famous men throughout history to mason, another reaper. as they talk and continue to catalog last thoughts, daisy becomes visibly emotional (although she tries not to let on) and heads to the copy room where georgia is making copies( Rube demanded a copy of the hard copy. He’s still a little skittish about the whole digital thing.)

Georgia: Daisy?
Daisy: Doesn’t it bother you Georgia?
Georgia: What?
Daisy: Everybody’s thoughts are the same.Two-thirds are people who regret, the rest are people who forgot to do stuff or are praying or…are alone. Shouldn’t there be more?
Georgia: More what?
Daisy: More piles, more words, more thoughts.
Georgia: I guess.(George is fiddling with the machine)
Daisy: and then you die and you might become a reaper, and…the magic of creation, well…that turns out to be a nine to five grind with lots of paperwork. It’s just so.. It’s so everyday.
Georgia: Lots of people…leave. There’s something “Everyday” where they’re going
Daisy: How do you know that’s true? Maybe we just keep moving from one filing job to the next. Oh My god…We are all temps
Georgia (Voiceover): It was strange to hear the secret of the universe tumble out of the mouth of a fallen starlet, in a copy room at 3:00 in the morning but considering what the secret was, it was perfect.

shouldn’t there be more? how tragic it would be to have my last thoughts be one of regret or of things i wished i had done. but how do you life your life that way? we make our choices, and those choices have consequences…sometimes good, sometimes bad. regret, as it is defined, is sadness associated with some wrong done or some disappointment. it’s the latter part that makes me feel like it is impossible to live life without regret, even if we try to call it something else. i think when someone (myself included) says that they life their life without regrets, it’s more that they accept the consequences of their actions and choices. my thinking goes along the line of: i am happy with where i am in my life. if i changed any of the choices i made, i wouldn’t be here where i am happy. sometimes i wonder how true that is. maybe i would be in a better place? there are aspects of my past that “have come back to haunt me”. if i had made a different choice in the past, maybe i wouldn’t have that which haunts me? maybe my life would be better? maybe it would be worse?

since it is impossible (at least for now, Einstein) for me to go back and change my choices, why obsess over them or focus on trying to change something i can’t change? it’s a futile effort. instead of focusing on how i could have done things differently to yield a different result, i try to focus on learning from those previous choices and making decisions in the present that will change my present and my future in a direction in which i want to head. no, it can’t change how i lived my life. but it can certainly change how i LIVE my life. and can go a long way towards living a life without regret. if the end result is what i want, how can there be regret?

would i want to change any of it, even if i could? i have heard (and said) many times that i am where i am because of the choices i have made…i am the sum of my choices and my experiences. so why would i want to mess with that? i’ve had a lot of great experiences in my life that i would never want to change, and i would most certainly regret it if i went back to change a “bad” thing about my life and then missed out on all of those experiences that i have had that i will hold with me for the rest of my life. ok, Einstein says that if i changed it, i wouldn’t know that i missed out on anything because that stuff would never have happened. but i know about it now, which is good enough for me to not want to change anything about my life, even if it proves to be an obstacle sometimes (yes, i am thinking of a particular aspect of my past). as crappy as it seems sometimes, or how some of those bad choices seem to creep up now and again, i’d rather have them there with the life that i have than to not have them but to be in any place but here.

back to the show..

the other scene also involves daisy, although indirectly. mason is finishing up the paperwork when he comes across the file of “Adair, Daisy.” her last thought goes directly to explaining a lot about her character. throughout the series, she is big on appearances. she “lived the life”, having flings and relationships with actors and other celebrities and eagerly sharing her tales of exploit with the others. it’s a tragic trait of a character in a fictional series. it’s even more tragic that there are real people like this. people that are so wrapped up in maintaining appearances and being the person that everyone is jealous of, but all the while lacking what they really, truly want out of life. the whole facade is a cover for the big, gaping hole in their life that they cannot or feel that will not ever fill. it goes towards the whole concept of being true to yourself and working towards what you want, instead of living your life for the approval or envy of others. so what is that important? money is great. so is fame. but i think the things we can get out of life that will keep us from having our last thoughts catalogued in to “regret” or “forgot to do stuff” are less complicated, but can be harder to find if you aren’t aware of their importance. our society is so focused on money and fame that people have long stopped being themselves and have been focused on being what everyone else wants them to be in order to make it big on a “reality” show (the concept that its reality is laughable, but i digress). no, i think one of the biggest treasures we can get out of life that will keep us from our last thoughts being of regret is something we get from being ourselves. it’s something we freely get from our family, and our friends, and hopefully from finding a partner in life. it’s something that, even with her telling her stories of how she lived, is reflected in the last thought of one Ms. Daisy Adair. her last thought?

“why has no one ever loved me?”

a few months back, i bought a little notebook. i found myself getting easily distracted and forgetting to do things–big things, little things, everything. i became very frustrated both that things weren’t getting done and that i was forgetting them, which probably affected me more. i had hoped that keeping a list of things to do in my little notebook would help. my plan was to add a task in my little notebook when it came up. when i finished a task that i had written in my little notebook, i would cross it off.

at first, my little notebook was overwhelming. i was adding tasks faster than i could remove them. my little notebook was a big, glaring reminder of how far behind i was. water the plants. pick up dry cleaning. finish the downstairs bathroom. mow the grass. routine tasks that under normal circumstances would seem like a grain of sand were huge boulders that i felt i could not move. i was discouraged and more frustrated.

after a surprisingly short period, however, my little notebook began helping. my little notebook was my chisel as i chipped away at the boulder of a task list. the boulder became a rock, the rock became a pebble, and after a while, the pebble became a grain of sand.

did i find myself falling behind again. why? because i abandoned the tool that got me to this wonderful task-less bliss. my little notebook sat lonely and forgotten in a dark drawer having only done its job and having been rewarded by being discarded.

this week, i found myself again being frustrated by the chaos of a task list that had no form. i was forgetting to do things and was poorly prioritizing the tasks that i did remember. it struck me then that i had turned my back on my boulder breaker, my chisel, and that which brings order to chaos. frantically, i searched for my little notebook. an outsider looking in would assume i was a drug addict looking for a hidden stash that i had misplaced. i was emptying drawers on to the floor, turning each drawer over and quickly scanning the contents as gravity pulled the contents downward. dump, scan, next. dump, scan, next. dump, scan. jackpot..

my little notebook didn’t wonder where i had been. my little notebook didn’t wonder what it did wrong. my little notebook didn’t harbor any resentment. my little notebook allowed me to open it and start a new list, welcoming the responsibility of organizing my life.

one of the first things that i crossed off my list was booking my trip to chicago. i love having friends across the country and around the world. i love that they allow me to visit them, and open their homes to me. my chicago friends have a new baby and a new house, and i am as eager to share that excitement with them as i am to not be here.

here, however, is a topic that i will cover some other time.

i’m catching up on some of my television programs and just finished the season finale of the usa program “the 4400″. in a nutshell, the premise of the show is that over the past 50 years or so, all of those ufo abductions have actually been people taken by the future. in the future, they were changed and then sent back to present day seattle. the people were changed in the future, altered by a chemical that caused many of them to develop special abilities. some heal, some see the future, some can make you see things, some can make you think things. the reason they were all altered and sent back is to prevent a catastrophe in the future.

in this season, the chemical that gives the special powers was isolated and developed in to an injection by the government and stolen by a group made of 4400 with the intention of freely distributing it to the public. instead of having the government control who gets “special powers”, their theory is that they need to give it to everyone if we have any change of survival in the future.

now, i’m not going to discuss the logic behind their plan. instead, i wanted to talk about how the season ended. specifically, the last few minutes of this episode. the 4400 gave the syringes to a group of people to distribute. except, there is a catch with the chemical. take the chemical, and your odds are 50/50. you either get the super power, which is random as best as anyone can tell, or you die. you know the odds. do you take it?

i’ve been trying to figure out what factors i would use to make the decision. obviously, we do things every day that provide a risk of death. driving. walking down the street. eating. but the reason we do these things is because the risk of doing them is minimal, at best. yes, people die every day from car accidents, murder, allergic reactions, or food poisoning. but the change that it will happen to you is so insignificant that we take it for granted and live our lives. we need to drive to get to work. we need to go places. we need to eat.

we also do things that have a higher degree of risk. we get on airplanes. we engage in sports. we do stupid things around the house, like walking down stairs carrying too many boxes and not seeing the steps. we stick forks in the toaster.

some people do things that have even higher degrees of risk. they skydive, or bungee jump, or rock climb. clearly, the risks associated with these activities is higher. with the amount of people that do these activities every day, the chance that you will be that fatality is still such a small chance that people continue to do these activities.

i think the first thing that differentiates the 50/50 proposition is that the “good” 50 has the potential to be really, really good. of course, your super power could be that your fingernails grow really fast (i love family guy). it could also be the ability to walk through walls. or heal cancer. the adrenalin rush from skydiving is a positive result of doing something that comes with a risk of injury or death. but what kind of adrenalin rush would you get from doing something where your chance of survival is 50/50 and surviving? that’s russian roulette with one bullet in a gun with two chambers. but that says nothing about the potential extra reward of developing a unique ability that may change the world.

i think there are a lot of different types of people that would make the decision for a lot of different reasons. motivation is another factor. i suppose some people would risk the chance simply because they could develop an ability that they could market for a profit. tragically, that’s a sad commentary on our society, but it’s an unfortunate reality. i could also envision some people being so desperate that they would do anything to make a change & take it and they will either die and end their perceived misery or, in an instant, change their lives, maybe for the better or maybe not.

but what about me? would i take the chance? i have a good life. a fifty-fifty proposition that could end with me losing the good life (for good!) seems like it would make a pretty easy decision on my part. but what if? what if the power i developed was the ability to cure disease? what if i was the only person in the world that could develop that specific gift? sure, i wouldn’t know that going in and, as i said above, it could happen that my gift was insignificant in the grand scheme of things. what if having a power like that corrupted me and i used it the wrong way? what if i healed the next hitler? what if i couldn’t heal the next martin luther king, jr.?

whatever my decision is & whatever i feel inside, i hope that if a decision comes to me, even if it isn’t as grand or as risky, that i take the time to evaluate the possibilities. i hope that i make the decision that provides the greatest good. i hope that it doesn’t change me from who i am and i hope it brings me closer to who i want to be. i hope the odds of me becoming that person are greater than fifty-fifty.