My Brain's "Memory" is Overloaded

Here's the problem with the world.  There's too much.  Too much what?  Too much of everything.  Too many books, too many audiobooks, too many movies, too many TV shows, too many podcasts, too many blogs, too many foods, too many songs, too many magazines, too many phones, too many apps, too many coffees, too many jokes, too many twitter accounts, too many tumblr's, too many bars, too many drinks, too many instagrams, too many flavors, and I could go on FOR-EV-ER.

What I means by Brain's memory, I mean like a computer's memory.  When you are doing too many things at once, your computer gets slow and can sometimes just shut down.  When I find myself getting caught up in too many things, my brain just needs to shut down and forget about a couple of things.

As I sit here, I am listening to one of the 20(!) podcasts that I listen to.  It's the Grantland Sports podcast with Jalen Rose, Dave Jacoby, and Bill Simmons.  I have 32 podcasts on my ipod that are unlistened to.  Let's see what else I have too many things of in my life:

Books I intend on reading: Inferno, Mark Twain, Jack London, Bukowski, George Pelecanos, Chuck Palahniuk's new book (whenever it comes out), Writing for Profit and Fun by Thomas Lennon, Steve Martin's book, Rodney Dangerfield's book, All The Rave: Inside Napster, Four Hour Chef, most of the Hunter S. Thompson books I own besides Hell's Angels, Fear and Loathing in LV, Great Shark Hunt, Everything is Perfect When You're a Liar, The How of Happiness (among other self help books), Save the Cat!, Don Winslow's books, David Thorne's two books, Pat Riley's Book, Jackie MacMullin's "When The Game Was Ours", Shaq's book, Phil Jackson's book (whenever it comes out), Chuck Klosterman's books, Patton Oswalt's book, The Steve Jobs book, whatever audiobooks are on my iPod that haven't listed yet and some of Neal Stephenson's books.  I didn't count, but that's about 3 years of just reading for me.  Just if I stopped and began reading, that would be so many god damned hours of reading.  I love audiobooks because it scales down reading from days and weeks to hours.

Movies to watch: I scaled it down from 140 movies and TV shows to 36 movies and 24 TV shows.  Most of the TV shows are British TV shows, whose seasons are usually 6 episodes long.  So, 60 movies/TV shows NOT INCLUDING what is currently on TV that I watch.  So you can add about 3-4 hours per week of TV to those numbers.

Twitter Accounts I follow: I recently scaled it down from 500 twitter followers to about 350.  If people are reading this and are finding out I don't follow them anymore (friends, etc.) it's because I don't find enjoyment from your tweets, intellectually or comically.  Following twitter accounts and keeping up with the trends can take endless ours of my life.

Places to Eat: Every new place in Boston/Cambridge/Somerville that are trendy and delicious.  I think according to my Thrillist, there are about 200 restaurants that I have not been to, but have probably showed some interest in going to.  Eating at these places would probably take about an hour, maybe a half an hour if I was lucky.

Podcasts: Adam Carolla Podcast: 90-100 minutes episodes every week day, Adam and Dr. Drew podcast: 60 minutes twice/three times a week, Nerdist: 60 minutes maybe twice a week, This American Life podcast: 60 minutes a week, Girl on Guy podcast: 90-120 minutes once a week, Aoki's House: 1 hour per week, Basketball Jones Podcast: 40-60 minutes every week day, Dave Ramsey podcast: 40 minutes per day, Dada Life: 60 minutes per month, Dr. Drew podcast: 60 minutes twice a week, Baseball Tonight Podcast: 40 minutes per week day, Bill Simmons' B.S. report: 60 minutes 2-3 times a week, Film Vault: 90 minutes once a week, Dyro Podcast: 60 minutes a week, Tiesto podcast: 60 minutes a week, Hardwell podcast: 60 minutes a week, Grantland Sports podcast: 40-60 minutes 3 times a week, ARIYNBF (look it up): Total 150 minutes a week in 2 podcasts, the White Panda's panda waves: 60 minutes per month, Bill Maher's podcast: 70 minutes a week.  And that's it.  That is so much listening to do in a month.  It's overwhelming, but I enjoy every one of those podcasts.  I need to scale down those podcasts even further to get to the music portion of my ipod.

Magazines: Wired, GQ, and I still get ESPN magazine even though I'm not paying for it anymore.

This is what I mean: I get too engulfed in consuming media that I forget to sit down and create for myself.  I'm happy that I got into gardening because it will literally produce something over time and won't just give me a headache after all the time I spend on it.  The time it took me to write all of those out and figure out what each of those will suck out of my life is about 90 minutes.  I listened to 2 podcasts in that time.  That's gross.

Want to know what's even the worst part?  I haven't even put in the time I spend making meals, driving to and from places, doing chores, exercising, watching sports (3+ hours per event) and going out on weekends, oh, and JOB SEARCHING!  The absolute worst part is that I feel like I'm stuck if I ever want to get into something new or want to go out and learn something.  I always feel I'm stuck in a routine that I have a hard time breaking.

I'd love to live in a world where I could get paid to consume all this media.  I know it's over my head, but I can't find a solution to most of these kinds of things.  I cut down my Netflix queue based upon what movies I could talk with my friends about.  I stopped going out and drinking for sports games I don't care about.  I started deleting podcasts I don't think I would enjoy or would see as a waste of an hour.  It's a process, but I just need to take the steps to eliminate the waste in my life, as depressing as that sounds.

Day 18: A Book I could read Cover to Cover and never get sick of...

I may have to look into my library for this one.  I've read some books during my time as a literate person.  Sure some childhood books run through my head when I come across this question, but some have always just stuck in my head and played a huge role in shaping my persona.  The trouble is I can't just name one.  So I'll list some that I thoroughly enjoyed reading more than once.

The Outsiders

Probably every middle-schooler's favorite book.  I know every boy wanted to be Ponyboy, or his brother Sodapop, or Dallas, or Johnny.  The fact that the movie to this book is acted by an all-star cast of Brat Pack actors is perfect.  C. Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Tom Cruise is just a murderer's row of young acting talent.  Not to mention that the cute young Cherry Valance was played by Diane Lane, who was hot then and is hot now.  Looking down the IMDB of this movie makes me realize that there were a lot of other now famous actors in that movie.  But even when I was reading this book, I loved how Ponyboy had to endure so much as a young kid.  It made you feel that your town and your friends were all in a small town and had to make a name for themselves in a rebellious way.  S.E. Hinton, who I didn't realize was a female until much later in life, was very important in a young Mark Sheehan mind.  Her prose was served very well in classrooms across America.

The Catcher In the Rye

Another popular book among adolescent males, as well as popular murderers, is The Catcher In the Rye.  Holden Caufield had a certain way about him that I, as well as many young unshaped minds, seemed to gravitate towards.  Perhaps it was his struggle to never let go of the things that reminded him of his childhood.  Maybe it was the upper-class scene that he didn't feel like he could blend into.  Whatever it was, there was this feeling that many people could understand about not finding your place in the world.  Plus the final quote of the book: "Don't ever tell anybody anything or else you'll wind up missing everybody" just seems like the biggest mic-drop statement on life.  I'm guessing for people that don't feel down about themselves after reading this book tend to have a lot more to love in life.  But either way, this book could be reread over and over and I don't know if I'll ever get bored reading it.

Survivor

The most gripping book I've ever read from Chuck Palahniuk.  It was the first book of Chuck's I read.  I was shopping through what was then called Borders.  I didn't know what to make of it at first, but I was stuck in this book before I could realize it.  The only thing I knew was that Chuck Palahniuk wrote Fight Club, and it was one of my favorite movies.  This book was written in 1999, which is important to know because the story involves flying a plane into something (spoiler: not a building).  The characters and the language of everything in this book is just so grounding it's unbelievable.  I remember hearing that people were trying to make a movie of this, but after 9/11, it seemed very unfavorable.  I can't recommend this book enough.  I own a copy and even though I've read it twice, I still think I might go read it again just because it's so good.

The Visible Man

This book, which I found out about from reading Grantland.com very often, is the book that left me thinking more and more about people and what they do when I'm not with them.  If you watch the short trailer above, you will only get a sneak peek into the novel.  I highly, highly, highly suggest reading this book to anyone who thinks about what people do when they are alone and what thoughts they may or may not be having on certain things.  It's the most recent book I've read that I keep thinking about.  I own a copy in paperback and it's just something that I will definitely want to talk about if someone else has read the book.

Day 17: Your High's and Low's of this past year

Okay, so I have to back track a bit.  I'm going to italicize the bad things and make the good things in bold font.  If I checked facebook from the last year until now (checking)...

So last year on Cinco de Mayo, I went down to New Bedford to visit some old college friends and drink.  It was there that I realized that UMass Dartmouth had put up a windmill and was in the midst of building a new building.  As of now, I think they are going to need a lot more renovations to save their admissions if you've been watching the news lately.

I also changed around my living room and didn't have a roommate at this time last year.  I also cleaned out my shed this time last year.  I know this because I can see it happening on Facebook.  I went to see Primus with my friends Jack and Bill at the Boston Opera House (at least I think it's the Opera House).

What's really funny is that this time last year, the Great Gatsby trailer was released and you know what?  The movie is STILL not out yet.  That's how awful I plan for this movie to be.  This movie trailer has been surfaced for more than a year.  It's also showing in 3D, which is now the stamp for "we need to make so much money off this movie it sucks this bad".

My summer of 2012 was pretty fun as well.  I went down the Vineyard to party it up with my friend Travis.  I love the Vineyard in the summertime.  I also had a nice weekend down the cape with the whole family together.  That was a really fun time.  It was nice to see everyone under one roof for the short time that we had.  I started reading George Pelecanos books and haven't got back to them since finishing the first one.  I also spent a couple of weekends during last summer getting "certified" to become a bartender.  I trained with about 25 other people my age to become a bartender, but I have yet to get a job as a bartender.  I know, my fault.

I turned 26 last year, which is a useless birthday to celebrate.  My cell phone also broke and had to use one of the cell phones that my friend Jon had sitting in his desk.  I still have it now and it's a great paper weight.  I ended up bidding for one on Ebay that was identical to mine since I didn't have the money to sign up for a new one and my contract wasn't yet up.

The Olympics happened, which was entertaining.  The Red Sox made a $250 Million dollar trade.  I was still working at the same job I am now and I broke my promise of trying to switch jobs and get the hell out of Bank of America.  I joined a Fantasy Football league in which I made a slew of new friends and went to Mohegan Sun, made week to week bets with other guys and just had a great time overall.  Can't wait for that again this year.  I found a retained a roommate that is still living with me.  I had my wisdom teeth removed, which was nice to take some time off of work, and is documented on my Tumblr.  I learned how to wrap my face in bandages in case there is anything wrong with my jaw.

There was a huge hurricane in New England that flooded most of Quincy.  I was Bane for Halloween, in which I won Scariest Costume at a costume party.  The NFL had their whole Referee dilemma which turned into a real clusterfuck, and then one week in Miami, this happened.  Fast-forwarding through Winter, I learned how to use the snowblower.  I spent New Years Eve in Boston, which was fun for doing something new.  I went to Memphis for work, which was fun for the two weeks I was there.  I ate much barbecue, I would've gained probably 30 pounds if I stayed there more than 2 weeks.  I came home to a huge snowstorm that nearly ruined all of the Northeast.   I found out that after working in Memphis, I think that a life in traveling is very much up my alley.  

I started this website through GoDaddy, called NoMoreGoofs.com.  It started out as a business idea for movie studios that would want to cut down on the number of "Goofs" that occur in movies.  Pretty much a small money idea that would help people clean up some of the mistakes that audiences are quicker to catch.  I haven't really touched it since I started it and it's pretty much been just a domain that I paid $80 dollars for 3 years.

I did get started in my journey to become Debt-Free.  I've paid off 2 of 3 credit cards.  I've been trying to work hard getting more money and cutting back my expenses.  It's a journey and not getting any other bites on jobs has made this hard.  I think getting a part-time job along with a new full-time job is really the next big thing I need to shift into a higher gear.

To summarize my last year, it's been several things up and several things down.  I feel that some of the ups in my life have been related to other things that don't really involve me.  As if my happiness can be quantified by which movies are in theaters.  In terms of relationships, it's been mostly down, but I keep trying to find a new person to meet.  Dating sucks.  I've made probably one female friend out of maybe 5 or 6 that I've gone on a date with.  Maybe I need some outside help that I have yet to seek.  Let's hope that this next year is going on the up and up.