Opportunity Costs

"Go often to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path. " - Albert Ralph Waldo Emerson

Austin City Limits (ACL) is coming up this weekend and I'm excited. ACL Music Festival is a three-day, eight stage event with 130 bands including Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, Beastie Boys, and more. I still need to get an actual ticket, but I'm hoping that will not be too hard. It is quite the experience. I was hoping to have some friends in town for this weekend, but that plan didn't work out. If you will be out there, I hope to run into you. I even have the ACL app for my iPhone which is cool. It would be awesome if the weather would clear up for the weekend. This is one of the benefits of living in Austin.

So AT&T finally activated the MMS feature on my iPhone, a basic feature available on most phones. It always sucked not being able to send or receive mobile pictures on my phone, but now I can. I hope to make use of this function, but it will take some getting used to. So feel free to send me cell phone pictures at your leisure.

The Fall TV Season has started. This is a great part of the year, except for the fact that instead of doing productive things like exercising, learning new hobbies or writing, I will be spending hours keeping up with my favorite shows. I'm excited to be again be watching; The Office, House, Lie to Me, How I Met Your Mother, Grey's Anatomy, and Smallville to name a few. So far the only new show I have found to be interesting is Community. If you have any suggestions let me know.

A friend of mine posted this article: Curing Your Restlessness: Limiting Your Choices
I don't think the article was all that well written, but the topic hit me spot on. I feel at times like the restless individual they describe. Here is my summary of the points I found interesting:

Unwilling to deal with potential trade-offs, many men decide the best course is not to choose at all, with the idea that keeping as many options open as possible offers the most freedom and the most happiness. But as intuitive as that might seem, studies show that it just doesn’t work that way.

Economists use the term “opportunity costs” to describe the things a person misses out on when they choose one path or item over another. Thus the more options we are faced with, the more opportunity costs we have to accept, and the more unhappy and restless we become.

The trick to curing your restlessness is to figure out which trade-offs you’re willing to accept and what things you are unwilling to compromise on. You can then greatly narrow the options to pursue.

Though I can not agree that I'd ever want to limit my choices, I can understand how "opportunity costs" can play a role in making decisions harder. This affects decisions from career, purchases, hobbies and especially relationships. I think the obvious application to relationships can be seen when you have a person that is afraid to commit or the guy always looking for something better.

There is also the idea of having kids since there are many opportunity costs involved there. You may get more than you have to give up, but you lose a lot of freedom it seems. It also affects me in other random aspects of life. For example, even picking up to move to Texas meant I couldn't live in DC, Miami, or California, which was hard.

The problem isn't looking back afterwards and wondering if you made the wrong decision, but picking the right choice from the get go. I like to weigh my options and make the best informed decision I can. The problem is the option of "what I could spend that money on?" "could I do better?" or "what I could do with that time?" is always there. People always want more and covet what they don't have rather than fully appreciating what they do have I think.

Another example that comes to mind is the opportunity costs that arise when selecting a profession. I have had many job interests, yet I can only focus on trying to do my best at one. I can't be a lawyer (and don't forget type of lawyer options), a professor, a writer, a psychologist, a professional poker player, a Congressman, a chief of staff, a bar owner, a life coach, a football coach, stand-up comic, a FBI/CIA agent, etc. True, you can do more than one of those at at time, but you can see the opportunity costs of the paths you have to give up to specialize in one.

My goal is not to be in a state of inaction, where I'm just biding time while deciding what I want to do next. I think I have the whole set a goal and do whatever it takes to meet it part mostly down. Now I just need to get the part where I know which goals are the goals I truly want. Picking something means giving up all kinds of possiblities, but also leaves you with nothing in the meantime.

Did you know that Allergies Affect Sex Lives For 83% Of Americans? You wouldn't think so, but the ability to properly breath through your nose is very helpful when it comes to this. I have always been mindful of this matter since I have always had bad allergies. Don't feel sorry for me, I cope, but anything that helps alleviate allergies is very welcomed. I remember how much my life changed when Claratin came out. I don't take it too often anymore, but it works great and was a welcomed alternative to the sleepy time Benadryl I had grown up on. I once had a doctor in Mexico, (yeah healthcare in Mexico because healthcare was too expensive in the 80s, little did I know it would get crazy worse) tell me that I'd better take allergy medicine if I ever wanted to have a girlfriend or else I'd never be able to kiss her. His comments were funny in retrospect, but a bit mean at the time I think.

Unrelated, yet related tangentially, I once had a friend tell me about an alternative remedy I could use to help me with my allergies and sinuses. When he described the process of using saline water, I thought he was crazy and dismissed it as I do most home grown remedies I get from family members. Two years later I run into this article, about this medicine probably invented for Yoga many ages ago, Alternative Medincine Cabinet the Neti-pot on the NY Times and found out that this alternative medicine was also featured on Oprah.

I decided to give it a try because I ran into it more than once and the reviews were great. I went to HEB and told the lady that I saw this medicine thing on Oprah and wanted to give it a try. She pointed me in the right direction. I went home and a bit nervous and embarrassed, I still don't know why since it is just my nose, but I gave it a try. I totally did it wrong, but I got it mostly right. (how you can do something totally and mostly at the same time I don't know.) To my surprise, it didn't hurt my nose. After, the feeling was magical. I could breath through my nose so much easier and I felt much better. I decided to sing its praises in my blog, but I guess I'll have to try it a few more times when I'm feeling sick to really be able to stand by it.

Here is a little local Texas news:

Texas Schools Sour On Abstinence-Only Sex Education
More government money has been spent on the cause of sexual abstinence in Texas than any other state, but it still has the third-highest teen birth rate in the country and the highest percentage of teen mothers giving birth more than once.

Thousands of Texans Attend ‘Largest Free Clinic Ever Held In The United States’ To Get Health Care
Over the weekend, thousands of Texans attended what is being called the “largest free clinic ever held in the United States” to get health care they otherwise could not afford. ABC-13, a local Houston station, reported that the event showed that there is an "epidemic" of people without proper health coverage in Texas. I wonder if there were tea parties outside.

cyrano was a thoughtful man

Clever Ending

“Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.” - Epicurus

You ever wake up from your sleepy daze while in your early morning shower and have the realization, I'm going to die? Not like at that very moment, but at some point. It is one of those thoughts, like the thought that God might not exist, that you feel guilty for having so you quickly change your thoughts to something more appropriate, knowing that it is something you have never truly let yourself think out of fear of what you would discover. The first part is scary because you think about how today could be the day that you cease to exist. You don't feel too guilty for having this morbid thought because you don't usually think things like this, so you feel the license to indulge the process for a bit more. Then your mind quickly jumps past the heavy weight that is your mortality and thinks about the how. Will it hurt? I hope it doesn't hurt, but we have all held our breath and that hurts. At what point does it stop hurting? You quickly convince yourself the odds are low that this is your day and that hopefully you'll live until a ripe old age. But you know you can't out live death even if you can delay it -- and once again it might be years down the road --but you are back at the question of how, and if it will hurt. You shake out those thoughts as your dry off from the shower and try to go back to the blissful denial of the inevitable. I guess I'll just do what I have done my whole life and live like I have all the time in the world, like I'm indestructible, like I'm part of a story that is guaranteed with a clever ending and a spectacular twist.

if you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to.

Infinite Perfect Moments

"In all the world there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine." - Maya Angelou

I am finding it harder to keep to my hiatus and not write as much. You get a random thought in the middle of the day that you'd like to share, but have no place to write it. You read something you think is neat and have no place to get feedback from your friends on it. This is why I enjoy having a blog. Here is an example that fit in well with recent events in my life. My friend Christina shared this article with me the other day: The Frisky: Are you stuck on your first love? I didn't have high expectations for the article, which did prove to be mediocre, but there was this a nugget of gold in there, a passage about a study and a link that I found very insightful:

According to Dr. Malcolm Brynin, principal research officer at the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex, first serious relationships are often “so idealized, they set up unrealistic benchmarks for subsequent relationships.” Dr. David Nias, a clinical psychologist at the University of London, echoes this sentiment, explaining that this kind of attachment is related to “imprinting,” the “psychological theory that we attach ourselves strongly to the first people we have certain relationships with.” Dr. Nias argues that the same kind of imprinting we experience with our mothers in childhood, we experience with our first loves, and that that often results in “lifelong attachments.”

It links to this article, The importance of first love, which goes on to say:

Dr David Nias, a clinical psychologist at the University of London, believes that first love is more likely to be a lifelong attachment because we have the equivalent of imprinting in our first romantic relationship. He says, "The first encounter has extra excitement and leaves a lasting impression. Men will remember the number plate of their first car because it has more impact than subsequent cars."

I can definitely see how this makes sense and love the personal irony that this research was done in London. A recurring theme in my life has been an unrealistic benchmark for relationships (as clearly shown here). I feel like when you are young you have this idealistic view of relationships and people and what to expect. When timing, life or reality doesn't let things pan out like you imagined, you hold on to this idea of what you think you lost. The memory becomes a fairy tale in your mind becoming more grand over time as you forget the bad and exaggerate the good and nothing in real life can ever compare to what you considered to be so true and so pure. As more time passes and you progress in life, you become more jaded and cynical when it comes to building relationships with people since they can't measure up. Little do you know that the real problem is in your own head and heart and the expectations that you, not the relationship created. You are falsely comparing each moment against an infinite imagination of perfect moments.

I want a lot from life and from people and by no means do I endorse settling for less than you want, but you have to be able to evaluate what you have with a clear head and not these mental roadblocks of a magical 'what could have been.' No one in my life has ever been able to live up to the 'how it is supposed to be' idea I had in my head, yet I've had relationships with some truly amazing people. People that have or will make any person very happy. You value the time you spend with people in life, be it a few months or years, each moment is still of value. I value those moments very much and they have shaped my life. Some moments are more intense than others and those I cherish.

So you can hold on so tightly to this love you have created, thinking it so pure and righteous, thereby shutting out the world and yourself to real experiences in new relationships. It isn't as clear cut as I make it sound, I've clearly been in love a handful of times, but it is this type of thinking that tears away at the edges. Makes you think there is something better just around the corner. Maybe it is the instinct to keep moving on that is strong in me.

People love to say, "Why should I settle?" It seems to me more of an excuse for ending a relationship you would never truly have considered settling with or as an excuse for being alone. It is very cliche and often said to others as a way to justify your present situation, but in truth there is no one in the world who wants to settle, that we can all agree on. I don't know why I went on that tangent, I just hate when single people say that (and when coupled people say that to single people) and hate that it was once my excuse. I thought that anything that didn't meet my unrealistic benchmark I'd consider to be settling. Maybe settling is the wrong framework from which to judge your decisions. The truth is probably closer to the fact that I enjoy my life and the freedom to make my own choices and live with the consequences. The fact that my decisions only affect me and not others and hence I can be less risk adverse. With love comes commitment and responsibility and putting that off as long as you can is what I've been happy to do. It's a fair enough life choice, if not the one others would choose for themselves.

At some point, you have to grow up and get over it. Get it and understand. You know, be a man and move on and don't let your well intentioned thoughts of days past be the shackles of today. Now as an adult, I think I get it, I get how people generally work, I get how I work, but yet somehow this topic still weighs on the mind. Maybe because it is heavily influenced by emotion and the endorphins in my brain that seem to not fit in so rationally to what I know is true. Nevertheless, I have grown up.

best wishes, in letting go