When I came home from class today I was too tired to start doing anything so I plopped down on the sofa and thought I’d watch a little TV. After flipping through the 150 channels I became very aggravated, as usual, that there’s absolutely nothing on that I want to watch. Whoever said that famous line “96 channels but nothing on” was oh so right. Cable television sucks but yet, we all have it. One of the HBO channels was playing “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” a classic movie that I absolutely loved when I was a kid, but as I started watching five minutes of it I started to wonder what I liked so much about it back then. And then I turned off the TV.

I spend most of my day behind a computer, which is awful and right now my eyes are about ready to pop out of my head. I read that if you watch an average of three hours of television a day, which I’m certain is about average for most people, then by age sixty you’ll have spent almost eight years of your life staring at a television. Scary thought. Some people spend eight years as President of our country.

I started thinking about how long I spend on average behind a computer every day. It’s probably a bit less now that I don’t work at the bank anymore. When I worked at the bank, I’d sit through 6 hours of class a day and about 4 out of those 6 hours was spent in a computer lab, at a computer. Then I’d go to work for 6 hours and stare at a computer there the entire time. Then I’d come home at night, and probably spend 3 or 4 more hours behind my computer at home. So that’s about 15 hours total a day. I still spend probably about 10-12 hours a day behind a computer now. So if I spend an average of 10 hours a day behind a computer for the rest of my life, by the time I’m 60 I’ll have spent approximately 25 years of my lifetime behind computers. Most of the rest of it will probably be spent sleeping. My eyes are starting to hurt now, I’m not looking forward to how my eyes will be feeling 10 years from now.

But I chose to go into a career path that uses a lot of computers. I’m good at using these things and I love using them. Sometimes it just kind of scares me what I’m doing to my eyes. I also wonder what I’m doing to my wrists/hands playing with a mouse and typing on the keyboard all the time. And sitting in crummy desk chairs all the time has already done a number on my back. Lizzie got me a nicer new chair for my birthday because I was always complaining about my old one. I’m pretty happy with it, my back has been feeling a lot better.

But I hope you appreciate the color scheme here on my journal Before it was black text on white. Staring at a white screen with black text on it is like staring at a flourescent light, so I’m trying to take it easy on your eyes and have switched to the white text on black background for this journal. It’s a lot easier on my eyes, hopefully yours too.

I’m really tired today. I was up late last night because Lizzie gave one of her employees a ride home late last night, and then got lost because she brought the person to a neighborhood she’s not familiar with. So she called me up and I was digging around on MapQuest trying to figure out where she was. She gets off work really late every night, which makes me nervous sometimes. I usually can’t go to sleep until I know she’s home. She locks up the store all by herself at 1:00 in the morning and walks to her car through a dark parking lot in south Minneapolis. I feel mostly comfortable with the neighborhood because it’s far south Minneapolis, which isn’t too bad of a neighborhood. If she were further north in the Uptown area, I’d probably go pick her up every night. But if she’s ever just 20 minutes late I start to worry, sometimes it’s just because she’s lagging on closing things down. Hopefully we won’t have to worry about that kind of thing. I’d like to live in a small town again, but close enough to a city where I can get a good job. I hate having to deal with crime, but I don’t want a crummy job either.

So like I said, I’m really tired and pretty grumpy today. I could use a nap, but I know if I take a nap I’ll never get to sleep tonight, and then I’ll never wake up tomorrow morning. So I think now that I’m done with classes for the day, I’m going to go out for another nice long run while the weather is still nice and cool. That should help me get energized, and also help me get some sleep tonight.

Hope you had a nice day. Talk to you tomorrow.