I’m a big fan of honesty and not hiding things, so let’s be up front about something: I am a complete failure when it comes to behaving like a grownup. <\/p>\n
I’m thirty-two. I have no fucking clue how that happened — my best guess is that time snuck by while my back was turned, on a rocket or something. <\/p>\n
Shit, lost the thread already. This does not bode well.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Right. Thirty-two. Thirty-two, and I haven’t figured out how grownup works yet. <\/p>\n
I can’t blame my parents, because they’re pretty good at grownupping, and I’m pretty sure they tried to teach me. I just never caught on. Maybe it’s like math, or a language, because I have no ability in either of those areas.<\/p>\n
One of the areas I fail at where others excel is organisation. I fail spectacularly. Anyone who’s seen my house knows this. <\/p>\n
I especially fail at shit that should be easy, which leads us into storytime. <\/p>\n
The Great DVD Debacle<\/b><\/p>\n
Many years ago, before I bought a house and settled in to completely fail at homeownership, we lived in a pretty shitty apartment. That didn’t stop our DVD collection from growing — although it should have, I think.<\/p>\n
One day, I was looking at the DVD shelf, and the DVD overflow shelf, and the DVD Overflow Shelf Overflow Stacks, and I started thinking, “Y’know, I can’t really remember all these. What if I buy a duplicate. And what if I want to watch something, but I can’t remember where it is, or if we even have it? I need to sort these. And I need a way to keep track of what we have.”<\/p>\n
So I sat there, and I looked at a few movies, and a few TV series. I looked at all the information on the boxes. And I settled on the grandest of plans: I would construct a database!<\/p>\n
This, of course, was a way of procrastinating. Because I didn’t know how to do anything with databases — I just knew that it was how you kept track of things, and sorted things. Vague ideas, really. But I thought I could learn, so I tried to learn.<\/p>\n
Specifically, I tried to learn Microsoft Access. <\/p>\n
I added a few fields. Title, obviously. Rating. Genre. Then, I started getting hyper-sorty. I added Aspect Ratio. I added a special field for Special Edition and Director’s Cut. Probably others that I can’t even think of right now, because they were insane. <\/p>\n
I started entering things. By hand, of course. Then, I started getting really sick of that process, and I thought about how stores have it easy, scanning barcodes and shit.<\/p>\n
I started dreaming of a fantastical future in which you could just scan the barcode of something with a small, available-to-anyone device, and automatically add things to a database that way. <\/p>\n
I thought there must be a way to do it with webcams, actually. <\/p>\n
Then, I dropped the entire thing. <\/p>\n
Epilogue: ‘Is it streaming? No? Nevermind.’<\/b><\/p>\n
All the DVDs were packed up and moved and reshelved, and then packed up and shifted and re-re-shelved, and now they’re on what should be convenient shelves, except they’re completely out of order, and some of them are missing, but I don’t know which ones. I don’t even bother looking for anything that isn’t a part of my incredibly small BluRay collection these days, because it’s far too much effort. <\/p>\n
If it’s not streaming, I just don’t bother. <\/p>\n
Debacle 2: Videogame Boogaloo<\/b><\/p>\n
A couple of nights ago, we got the Xbox 360 back from the damned XBox 360 Sanitarium again. And Gremlin wanted to play a game.<\/p>\n
I wanted to go to sleep, but, no, I had to go hook things up first. And probably spend an hour sitting there waiting for him to figure out what game he wanted to play, so I could find it and put it in, so I wouldn’t wake up to every damn game we own all over the place.<\/p>\n
He hasn’t even learned that you turn the console off when you go to bed. Putting games back? I really don’t think that’s going to happen. Especially now that there’s a whole new process to learn. <\/p>\n
But, we live in an amazing new world. That barcode scanning thing is a thing<\/i> now. So, I hit the Google Play store and started looking for something that would let me do what I wanted to do. <\/p>\n
…and I went to bed. And got back to it later. <\/p>\n
Last night, actually. I played around with the app I found a little bit, found it to be incredibly lacking, and decided to try a Google Docs spreasheet instead. <\/p>\n
One tab for each console, then…shit, what do I do now? Should I do one tab for each console, or one tab for each shelf? And how do I sort them? Alphabetical is popular, sure, but it might be a good idea to keep series together. And I want my Zeldas out front, until I decide to put them somewhere extra-extra-special. <\/p>\n
…and I gave up again. Because that’s what I do. I let myself get overwhelmed with possibilities and complexity, and I shut down. <\/p>\n
Because I don’t like doing things until I know what I’m doing. And I can’t decide what I’m doing. <\/p>\n
The End. <\/p>\n
Of the story, anyway. Not the post.<\/p>\n
One of the first things I did this morning was post about it on Facebook, because I suddenly remembered that I’ve got a friend-of-a-friend who plays a lot of games. That must mean he has a lot of games, right? Unless he trades them in for new games, or rents them, or something. Still, lots of games.<\/p>\n
He must keep track of them somehow.<\/p>\n
If not, someone else probably knows how to make this easy.<\/p>\n
The answer? Google Docs. Keep it simple.<\/p>\n
Simple isn’t easy or convenient, though. It’s not ‘point camera at barcode and auto-get the information’. Simple is just…simple.<\/p>\n
Maybe this is a goal I need to set for myself. My psychiatrist talked about how, when I got a therapist, that therapist would work with me on setting goals. But, am I allowed to set goals before I get the therapist? Am I even ready to set a damned goal? <\/p>\n
What happens if you set goals before you’re ready to set goals? <\/p>\n
…should I keep track of my goals? <\/p>\n
And here we go ’round again. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m a big fan of honesty and not hiding things, so let’s be up front about something: I am a complete failure when it comes to behaving like a grownup. I’m thirty-two. I have no fucking clue how that happened … Continue reading