I’ve forgotten what normalcy feels like

November 17, 2021November 19, 2021 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Occasionally, I’ll have a day where I’ve caught up with all of my daily chores, the kids are actually asleep, and with the whole, giving myself until 1 a.m. thing in play, I have a moment to sit there and feel like a human again. But then I realize that I don’t really know what to do when I have like, 90 minutes to myself suddenly, and it’s occurred to me that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a normal person.

I’ve put my general life on hold until things chill out on the whole raising kids thing, but in doing so, I seem to have lost touch on what to do with free time, when I actually have it. One of the first things that comes to mind is to possibly watch television or movies that have been queuing up as things I feel like I should watch, but with just 90 minutes if I’m lucky, I often tell myself that I don’t want to start something that I won’t have any real reliability to continue on with, so I kind of nix that idea.

Running, as much as I wish I could keep doing it like I used to, isn’t really an option, because it’s often times so late in the evening, that I don’t like the idea of pushing myself to do cardio at a stage of the day when energy levels are low, and I don’t want to elevate my heart rate before ultimately going to bed, because that seems counterproductive. Plus, I don’t want to work up a massive sweat, and be forced to shower at like 1 a.m. because #2 is already a light enough sleeper as it is, and I don’t want to risk waking her, so running is off the table too.

I’ve basically forgotten how to surf the internet, and the vast majority of news and information that I get on a somewhat regular basis is often second-hand over social media, and if I’ve got a little bit more time, then I scroll through Apple News to see what might be showing up in the media. All the sites I used to go to in the past, I really don’t anymore, because I don’t remember them off the top of my head, or they’re just black holes that I know I’ll get sucked into if I visit them again, so I opt not to.

There are worse things to eventually fall back onto, but at least I’m often times using these opportunities to catch up on writing, which indicates to me that even at the most base and subconscious levels, the act of writing is still that highly prioritized in my head to where it’s what I gravitate towards whenever I can.

But if it’s not writing, it’s usually some dumb bullshit like, finding a YouTube channel simply called Idiots In Cars, and then the rest kind of serves itself. All the same, it’s going to be an odd transition when the day comes where both my kids are in bed and out by 8pm or sooner, and I might actually have some more hours to actually feel like a human being again.

The perpetual uphill plight of the brogger

October 12, 2016July 26, 2020 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Morning #1 back from Korea; I’ve taken the rest of the week off to help me get over jet lag, and the fact that on top of Europe, on top of Korea, there’s one last weekend trip to Florida for the Disney trip that has happened every single year for the last few, for the Food and Wine Festival.

I stayed up for nearly 30 hours with hopes of counteracting the going-back-in-time nature of going East to West, and that when I did sleep, it would be a nice snooze-fest culminating with me waking up feeling refreshed and closer to beating the jetlag than succumbing to it. Instead, I woke up in the middle of the night once, managed to fall back asleep, until the landscapers at mythical gf’s complex decided to roll in at like 7:00 am and get to work, waking me up feeling groggy and a little cranky, although I am relieved to be back in Georgia after such a long trip still.

So, with a little bit of breakfast and my first good cup of coffee in a long while, I’m sitting here trying to figure out what to do next with myself. Do I try to write about Korea? Do I edit photos? Which ones? Europe, or Korea? I can’t edit photos on this raptop; I don’t have my old baller work raptop to do that on anymore, so I can only edit on my PC at home. But I’ve also got nearly 2,000 photos over two trips, and I haven’t touched a single one. What about the list of thoughts and observations that served as the mental list of things to write about once I got back? God damn the list is really fucking long. Do I write about Worlds? Virginia Tech’s annual delving into the National rankings before they fall out again? The Cubs taking out the Giants? The obvious ambiguity of the Miami coroner not revealing Jose Fernandez’s toxicology reports?

Here’s the thing though: not a single one of these things that I feel like I need to do, are things that I’m required to do. Nobody reads my brog; it’s down, still, and I’m beyond my wits end with that fact. I can’t even read my own brog. So why do I feel like I should spend so much of my time brogging? I mean, that’s what I do, I write in my spare time because that’s what I’ve always done, and although I might not appreciate it at the current, I know I’d appreciate it all later, because I’ve been chronicling my life and thoughts for the better part of the last 17 years or so.

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Old age, being weird, or just a morning person

August 6, 2016July 22, 2020 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Maybe all of the above. I realized over the weekend that I don’t really know a whole lot of morning people. People who get up early, as pretty incapable of sleeping in for more than eight hours tops, and are productive, active, and can often find solace and comfort in the relaxed hours of the day in which there’s a good chance that a lot of people are still sleeping.

I am one of these people. I take a lot of enjoyment in the early hours of the day in which I am often times in my own head and thoughts, and I feel like I can take my time and do, things, at a leisurely pace, thus being vastly more productive than when amidst other people.

This isn’t to say that I am not a night person, quite the contrary, as I do love good times at late hours, and don’t hesitate to stay up until three in the morning if the circumstances allow for it. It’s just when my head hits the pillow, if I don’t set an alarm, 7-8 hours typically suffices for me as sleeping in, as somewhere around 5-6 is the norm for me otherwise.

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I don’t know what to do anymore

September 22, 2015July 17, 2020 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

*Picture unrelated. I just wanted to post it, because it’s pretty incredible to see Ed O’Neill reprise Al Bundy for a photograph, and Sofia Vergara absolutely kills it, dressing up as Peg.*

For the better part of the last two weeks, my time after work hours has been spent, either doing more work for work, entertaining guests, communicating with family, or editing the massive number of pictures I took from Dragon*Con.

Just the other day, I finally finished the last of the pictures to edit, and have queued them up for eventual posting to the brog. My current assignment at work has begun winding down, and I’m no longer getting calls or emails at 10 pm, asking me to “make some quick edits,” and the matters concerning my family are a whole lot of waiting games, so there’s little sense in needing to fret for every other minute of the days.

That being said, I don’t know what do with myself anymore. It’s felt like it’s been so long since I had complete freedom to sit around and do nothing again. I stood around for a moment after I got home from work and went on my usual after-work jog and ate some dinner, wondering just what the heck I was going to do for the rest of the night. I mean, the possibilities felt a little endless, since I’m behind on wrestling, House of Cards, and there are things collecting on my DVR that I’ll eventually want to watch. I’ve got video games that I haven’t even touched that I’m debating on giving some attention to as well.

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Taking a breather

May 15, 2015July 15, 2020 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Something not very good has happened, and I do not want to talk about it yet.

I can’t say that I’m not going to be posting anything at all until things settle down, because who knows I see something and feel overwhelming inspiration to write about it, but I think it’s safe to bet that I’m going to probably err on sticking to this self-imposed timeout until things settle down.

There is a likely definitive conclusion to this, and it won’t be too long, but frankly, I don’t feel like writing or even really attempting to do so right now, and it’ll probably be that way until it’s over with.

Well, this is awkward

July 31, 2013July 7, 2020 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

So, like a day after I pretty much anoint what I thought was my favorite Miss Fortune, I come across this Miss Fortune costumer. And it’s kind of one of those situations, like a Ben Stiller-Owen Wilson kind of movie, where a guy gets engaged to a really good looking woman, but like at the night of the engagement, he sees/meets a new woman that really piques his interest, and then the awkward plot of the film is born.

Now I’ll stand by my opinion that I really like the photo of the first Miss Fortune costumer, but I have to say that in comparison of total packages, this one well, blows her away. Eviscerates her. I say with an awkward cringe that it’s not even really a comparison. It’s one of those situations where I guess it’s kind of good there’s a language barrier and the fact that my brog gets probably like six hits a day, with four of them being me, because she probably won’t see these remarks.

But I think it’s pretty much a layup that as far as my little world is concerned, we have a winner of Miss Fortune costumers here.

Aside from the obvious aesthetic appeal on all the obvious accounts, I simply think she just, nails it. The more I look at this particular picture, the more I appreciate it.

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