As a new month arrives and there's only 2 months left in 2019 (The Year of the Pig! Great fortunes in Chinese culture!), I'm reminded of how many people still rely on horoscopes, palm reading, fortune-telling, or other mystical, scientifically-unproven techniques for predicting one's future. I get the allure of it, that somehow which month you where born in has something to do with how you should approach your love life or confess to your secret crush, or whether a line on your hand means you will be lucky in business and finances, when the idea of months and years was an artificial construct created by humans anyway. I personally think each year should be more than 365 days as the summers seem to drag on longer and longer into August and September (it's FINALLY getting cold here on the East Coast). I just watched an episode of Shinya Shokudo (or Midnight Diner), a Japanese TV show, where a guy who writes horoscopes under a fictitious name uses his horoscope writing to manipulate a girl he likes. It's amazing that in 2019 there are still people gullible enough to believe in such things, or they just want to believe in something. Then again, I'm writing in this blog shortly after reading a fortune cookie line that said, "There are 4 fundamental necessities in writing: Simplicity, brevity, creativity, and humanity." Which caused me to write. And darn if I don't open a fortune cookie sometimes hoping beyond to hope to read "new riches are coming your way" or "a new business opportunity is just on the horizon" or something generic like that.
I don't like to admit having problems, which is a big cause of fights between my mom and my wife MJ because neither of THEM like to admit their faults neither, causing friction and drama, but I will admit to a problem I've noticed recently: I fall asleep too easily even when I don't want to. When I was younger I would feel sleepy and start to have my eyes close but would always be able to fight the Sandman and somehow stay awake through a boring class, a boring movie, but I guess as an adult my body has changed, and sometimes at work I do fall asleep just for a quick minute or two. I know because I wake up and time has elapsed. I feel a whole lot better after that brief minute or two and it actually helps my productivity later in the day as I don't feel that sleepy anymore like my brain just "restarted," but for that minute or two I'm actually asleep, which is very bad if a coworker, or worse, my boss were to walk in. I call it Yan Disease (as my dad and sister both suffer from varying levels of needing to sleep right away, so it might be in the genes). On the flip side, because I fall asleep so easily, I can get on a plane right away or any other moving vehicle and like succumbing to the waves of the ocean, I will drift off.
Yan Disease, though, is particularly dangerous when I'm the one driving that moving vehicle, and it's soon after I just had a meal, or I'm particularly tired from not getting great sleep on previous nights. Especially on a long road trip, Yan Disease has made it difficult for me to drive on the highway because there's a lack of moves I have to make: my body doesn't think it needs to think and can just draft along like an airplane at the same unchanging speed. Which makes me think I probably avoided a risky proposition by not driving my car all the way from LA to the East Coast this summer. Luckily, there are medically proven cures to Yan Disease with limited side effects: it's this wonderful thing called coffee. Use in moderation because I don't have much of a tolerance to anything like coffee or alcohol, so it can keep me up all night if I use too much of it.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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