When Life Hacks Get it Twisted

I love those "Life Hacks," but, sometimes, the best thing I get from them is a good laugh. Some things (in my life anyway) are just un-hackable. Maybe certain areas of my life are just not to be tamed. Here are a few hacks that I've run across that don't work so well for me:

Hack: Beating your phone addiction. My Life: Too late. I need a serious intervention.

I'm advised that instead of checking my phone first thing in the morning, I should spend my time "organizing my thoughts." Yeah. Okay. That would be great - if I didn't need my phone to wake up in the first place. I not only use my phone as a morning alarm, I sometimes use it as a noise machine for getting to sleep in the first place. (I love my phone so much that, if it had warm toes, I'd snuggle with it.) Once I do get up and think I might be able to function, I need my phone to outline my day. I even use this app (sometimes) so that I have something talking to me. (My phone is the only thing that wants to have a conversation with me before I've had coffee.) A few more years of becoming any more dependent on our phones, I imagine some of us will forget to breathe without Siri or her boyfriend reminding us. (By the way, is it sad that I've been thinking of naming my phone? Some days, I think of her as "Lou." Some days, I just call her "unresponsive bitch.")

Hack: Having "organizing stations" around our home. My Life: If I was that organized, I wouldn't need this.

This hack made me actually stop reading to roll my eyes. First off, there are 11 of these suggested stations. Eleven! Come on now. With my illness, I have the attention span of a toddler. I read the first one and started skimming the rest. Here are the listed stations: Mail/Correspondence, Wardrobe, Fix-it, Cleaning House, Gift Wrap, Charging, Bag Drop, Child's School, Recycling, Car Travel, Health/Wellness.

Well, damn. I had to rest after just going through the list. Talk about needing a Health/Wellness station... Actually, I have every one of those so-called "stations." They just aren't exactly organized. I even have a Child's School station (and no kids). That's for all the coloring books and pieces of crafts I collected when I was recuperating and learning to talk again in complete sentences. Some of the stations are just crazy. (A sister-in-law of mine did once have a Gift Wrap room, but she had a 20,000 square foot house. I guess she needed to do something with a good hunk of it to keep me from moving in.) I didn't even check to see what a Bag Drop station is. Unless it's where I keep my big Bed, Bath & Beyond bag of Walmart and Target bags... ~shrug~ What the hell ever.

Hack: Motivation to show up at work. My Life: I owe, I owe, so off to work I go.

Right now, there are days I dream of getting back to work. This whole idle lifestyle is the pits when you are too broke to turn idle time into fun. When I was working, I had all the motivation I needed: house note, car payment, $200 a month shopping habit and, oh yeah - mouths to feed. When I first saw this hack, I instantly remembered my mother and what she would say when I'd complain about my job: "You better get your happy ass up and get to that office. Hungry trumps tired any day." (I laughed so hard, I got a cramp. I really miss my mother!)

By the way, I actually did get a great tip from this hack. I will now be using the "Hemingway Technique" when it comes to writing.

Since I get a daily email feed of hacks, I could go on and on, but you get my point. You can hack some things, but life is, after all, life. Part of the adventure is to live it raw. Of course, I will take help where it helps.

Peace
--Free

A Hacking Good Life

Life got instantly better for me tonight. I will explain that in a later post. The thing is, I'm in a good mood - a sharing mood.

If you haven't heard of Flipboard (for phone, in my case), I think you should check it out. It's basically reading, collecting and sharing articles: news, sports, life - whatever floats your boat. Any kind of "hacks" are currently floating my boat pretty high. Life hacks, DIY hacks, whatever.

Here are some of the hacks I've seen since subscribing to several "magazines" on via Flipboard:

1. How to fold a fitted bedsheet. (It drove my military dad crazy that I'd just sort of roll them up. Neatly.)
2. Repurpose an old fridge. (The term "repurpose" will start to get on my nerves soon.)
3. Configure all cores of your processor for full use. (I can't wait to try that one, but on a clearer-headed day! Took three tries just to type out the link text.)
4. Decorate with balloons for Halloween. (I don't do Halloween, but the balloon idea is cute.) Similar idea is here.
5. Use YouTube as an alarm clock (How tight is that? I could wake up on gym days by jamming out to this. Or start off a Saturday morning relaxing to this.)
6. Making these tea-light jars could be a nice bonding project for parents, aunties, siblings, whoever. (My sis-in-law Keva would have been all over this with my niece.)
7. These freaking cute planters are something my niece Gabby will do. (If I call supermom Keva, Martha-mom & Gabby is Cathy Creative. I'm lacking. My planters would look like they had epilepsy.)
8. I will be making the unpoppable bubbles for D.J., bet that. (Let me be honest: with or without D.J., I can't wait to try them!)
9. If you're going to get one, make it a temporary tattoo. (Tip: You might want to get someone with passable artistic skills to do the markings, i.e.: not me.) Personally, I don't like tattoos on women. It seems un-fem, but, hey - that's just me. 
10. Learn to say F.U. in different languages. Maybe if I say it in Latin, I'll sound like an educated sailor. (I see you looking back at #9. I'm not a hypocrite, I'm just complicated.)
11. This hack is to simplify Wikipedia articles. (I checked this out. Meh. Not sure I could use articles that stripped down.)
12. Use this site to remove your personal data from other sites. (Haven't checked out this one yet. What data do they collect?)
13. Reading car dashboard lights. (I already know the main one for you-better-put-in-some-gas-before-you-have-to-walk-your-ass.)
14. Guide to dressing well. (All Walmart shoppers - please, please, please take heed.) Just kidding. I'm generally okay, but I did wear a day-glo green watch with an electric pink jacket and "vibrant purple" nail polish with blazing blue sweats to the gym the other week. What the hell was wrong with me that day? Let's just file that one in a don't ask/don't tell file.
15. Questions that an interviewee should ask (and that I'm going to send to all my nieces and nephews.)These questions are more than "impressive," they are vital.
16. Educational websites for everyone. (I'm going to hurt my computer getting over to the ones on math. I found out the other day that if I was math-challenged before my sarc, I'm now math-illiterate.)
17. A Google Maps mystery? (I actually did this and... I have no idea what is up with what I saw. Check it out for yourself.) Note: when instructions say to "go up" or "go left," it means to use the arrows of the compass at the top left of the map screen. 

Pretty cool stuff, right? Enjoy

Peace

--Free