Being here

Welcome to this week's Reno News & Review.

Well, there went another big chunk of my life, another semester down. I know a lot of you think I'm crazy, and I often hear about how I must be crazy with the workload I carry, but I really don't feel like I'm killing myself (except that my gym time gets cut out). I think there are three reasons for that. I don't follow sports, watch television or participate in a religion.

My dad used to make a similar point to me years ago. When I was a teenager, I had to go out every night, party with my friends, get friendly with whatever girls would have me. He'd always say something along the lines of “The same exact thing happens every night; you'd miss nothing.” And then he'd sit there and watch sitcoms on network TV every night and drink beer. But it wasn't the hypocrisy I was trying to get at, it was just this concept of how much of our time living we spend not living.

I mean, I'm all for drinking beer and being merry, but if the time we spend watching TV or watching sports on TV was taken off the end of our lives instead of in increments throughout, there'd be a hell of a lot fewer people getting softly shitfaced on the couch and watching The Voice. And Sundays, can you imagine the pyramids you could build if you just decided to stop pretending that professional sports are something that fulfill you personally or that you can take personal pride in?

I don't have any answers, maybe going to church on Sunday really does put a chit in some get-into-heaven-free box. But wasn't there some debate in Christianity whether good works, like volunteering at the Literacy Council or visiting somebody who's sick, wouldn't also get you a couple of those secret keys to the pearly gates?

I'm big into investing my time and money into things that will advance me as a human being, and I can't think of anything that does that better than education. On the other hand, you've got to have a hangover every now and then to appreciate all that self-improvement.