My Million Dollar Ideas: Pt 2: Compu Cardio
2) Compu-Cardio
On many an occasion, I’ve been known to be extremely busy and horrifically bored all at the same time. Hell, that was my entire last week. It seems I have to either:
a) be extremely interested and engaged in something
or
b) be completely lured away from the rest of the normal world.
This means I need to be either working on a project that I’m excited about -- something extraordinary that’s over my head and bigger and better than I’ve ever done before -- or I’m watching SpongeBob Square Pants. Possibly Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. (Go ahead, make your comments. I’m secure with myself.) Well, I suppose TLC and the Discovery Channel are more category “A” -- the interesting items. SpongeBob is more a diversion. Anything else though, and I just sit there, staring at the screen, thinking about work and having no clue what’s going on with whatever is on the television. Someone will ask a question about the show I’m watching and I’ll have to admit I had no idea what just happened, even though I was staring right at it.
With that information, imagine how much fun I have doing any sort of cardio at the gym. Good god, I have never felt so tortured in my entire life as I feel on the stair climber. The physical exertion is not what contributes to the difficulty … it’s the blankness in my head that’s intolerable. I’m forced to fill it with thoughts like “look at that guy.” Or “look what she’s wearing.” And “I wonder why there’s a crack there in the ceiling.” All these idle, stupid, completely inane thoughts make me want to kill myself. I don’t care about that guy. I don’t care what she’s wearing. I don’t care why there’s a crack in the ceiling. But there’s nothing else to notice or think about! I’m pretty much silently melting down. Sometimes I look around and wonder if other gym-goers can actually hear my brain screaming out for help like a small abducted child.
“Shut up! Shut up, I say! You will stay on this machine and you will LIKE it!”
”So watch TV”, everyone always says.
Right. Judge Judy, ice skating, and four different varieties of local news. With such a rich plethora of options, how will I ever decide? Lucky me, however, I did get to witness the tragic downfall and gradual restoration of Shelly Bruner’s hair color.
“Bring an MP3 player, listen to music.”
“Yeah, and?” I say that and people go, “What do you mean?”
Let me ask you this: If the city is outside your window at six in the morning offering up a jackhammer and dump truck, do you just turn on the stereo and go, “Man, that’s better”? No. If something obnoxious is going on outside, masking it with something else does not mitigate the annoyance. And being bored is annoying.
So fine, go ahead, tell me I’m type A and I need to relax. I’m aware of that fact. But thinking about nothing is not relaxing, it’s boring. It feels like a waste of my life. I’ve got a huge list of things I want to do before I die and spending an hour at a time thinking about nothing does not feel like it’s getting me anywhere I want to be. I’ll think about nothing when I’m lying on a beach in the
So here’s my solution: compu-cardio. Instead of having a dumb rack where you can put a book, I want a surface I can strap my lap top to. Then I can listen to music, work on projects, research information I want, and the works. I’m tired of discipline. I want blissful efficiency.
Next up: Making the world a better place
Precocious entrepreneur, workaholic and a rabid perfectionist Crystal Starlight knows a thing or two about getting ahead at a young age. Email her at [email protected]