The Five Year Rule

Apparently Ted Mosby can be in things other
than How I Met Your Mother

I was thinking about the future, as is the plight of a college senior, when I remembered a movie I watched on my first(?) date with the old ball and chain. One of my favorite quotes from Happythankyoumoreplease, a movie with Ted Mosby as a writer instead of an architect, is that five years from now you'll look back and think what an asshole you were five years ago.

Penn&Teller, pointing out assholery
since the dawn of time

There's a lot of truth to this quote, because I've never thought of myself as asshole in the present but whenever I think back to who I used to be... well, I cringe. It's not that I'm a terrible person from day to day, it's just that as I mature I tend to look back on what I did with my "I'm so smart now" glasses. This got me to thinking though, if I'm only an asshole from the perspective of future (actually, present looking at past) me, then what does that imply about my choices? I like that to think that it means I do the best I can in the present, and just accept that I might think it was stupid when I reach the future.

Apparently this is a misquote,
but I prefer this to the real one

What I take away from this is that every single stupid (or not so stupid) decision we make now is what will define us in the future. Every single mistake we make adds up in immeasurably tiny ways to contribute to the person that you will become, even if you are happy with the person you are now. Now, before all one of my readers tells me that I should quit the pseudo-philosophy-- I know that this post is quite silly, and that it will look even dumber in five years' time. But, and this is a big but, this is the post I need to make at this point in my life-- it's the right choice now, even if I might make fun of it later. Time is a funny thing, for one thing we it is almost impossible to define the present. Most importantly to me though, is the fact that time completely changes my perspective on almost everything. What was intensely painful yesterday might be the transformative moment of my life when viewed from the future.

An overly idealistic
but thought-provoking view on fathers

Largely, I suppose that it's impossible to tell where you will be in five years but now I try to use that point of view as my guide for choices. How will I view this decision five years from now? Well I'll probably think I was an asshole, but at least I can admit that.

Memory

It might be easier to date elephants
you only ever have to compliment them once
because they never forget

So I was browsing reddit trying to come up with a topic to blog about when a great idea struck me right in the face. Unfortunately,  I then tried to open wordpress (www.blainedenton.wordpress.com) which crashed repeatedly. After I finally got it open, I had completely forgotten what it was I was going to write about. I then proceeded to try and re-open all the tabs I'd just closed from reddit which achieved absolutely nothing. I'd been so distracted for those few crucial seconds that I couldn't remember anything about my idea.

If it weren't for this little guy I would resort
to sitting in the corner crying over lost ideas

Thankfully for me (and my vast audience of one) I came up with the bright idea of writing about my piss-poor memory. I could go into the intricacies of how the new social media has destroyed our ability to pay attention to-- oooh a butterfly. But instead I want to write about the importance of remembering the important things.

Pictured: what my wall would have looked like if
 I actually took pictures of it

I am a fan of post-its. I like to write things down and when I'm busy, I like to see what I have to do, do it, then throw the now useless post into the garbage and celebrate my triumph over paper that thinks it can tell me what to do. Were it not for post-its, notebooks, and whiteboards I wouldn't know where to be at what tie, or what to do by what date. But beyond just the scheduling aspect, I use these tools to remind of certain things. 

If ever I find myself an amnesiac in search of a killer
I'd be well-prepared

For the longest time I had the words "memento mori" written on my whiteboard, which means remember that we must die (or some such thing). I had this up there because it always puts things into perspective-- of everything I have to give in this world, the most valuable is time. Now this may be because I'm an English/Education Major which means that I will be paid with a salary of chickens-- but I also think that it is true for most people. The only asset I can never regain is time and as such I am very picky about what I spend my time on. I like to be productive, but I also need some downtime in which to reflect and relax. I need to constantly remember these things because otherwise I find myself falling into a routine wherein I am not valuing  my very limited time here on Earth. And since my actual memory is useless, I like to write things down because then I can see exactly what it is I'm thinking and evaluate if my actions are in-line with those goals*.

Meditation: lets you cause rocks to float above the ocean

*HOLY BALLS! I just remembered what I was going to write about initially; being still does not equal doing nothing (It pains me to admit that this quote is from the new Karate Kid movie. More on that later.