World of Warcraft and the Princess Bride

So the other day a friend of mine told me that his roommate, another friend of mine, has been staying up really late to play a certain video game. So the next time I talked to this friend, I teased him about staying up late to play, and he got a little bugged. Apparently lots of people had been teasing him lately about that, and he'd about had enough.

And during our conversation he said, "When people bug me about it it just makes me want to do it more," and that reminded me of the show "The Fantasticks," and the song in there about "We did it 'cause they said no." Or something teenagey-rebelious like that.

And it made me think about how often we do things that we KNOW are not in our own best interest and that we KNOW won't make us happier, or healthier. Take me, for example: 'K so I added this thing on my sidebar about what books I am reading and have just finished reading, and you'll notice that The Princess Bride is on the "just finished this" list. Great book! But the point is that even if I had had the "currently reading" list up before today, The Princess Bride would never have been on that list. Here's what happened...

I put the movie of The Princess Bride in on Thursday night because I needed to format my appendixes, and that is not an activity that requires actual brain power, so I thought putting in a movie would keep me sitting in one place to do it, and if I put in a movie that I have seen literally 9 million times and can quote large sections of then I wouldn't actually have to watch it, and so I would get lots of appendix-formatting done.

This worked reasonably well.

But then I felt the need, after watching this great movie, to, yes, you guessed it, read the book. That night. Until I literally passed out at 2am. And then finished reading it in about 15 minutes after my shower on Friday. (And no, I am NOT going to tell you what time that was on Friday. I would like to maintain some semblance of self-respect.)

But the point is that earlier this week I was so stressed out I thought I was not going to survive. And I still have all those things to do, so I fight hard to keep myself from completely freaking out from stress...and then I stay up REALLY late and sleep in REALLY late so that I can read the book of the movie that I just watched, and which I was only watching as an aid to getting some work done.

Genius.

And I know that if I read my scriptures first thing in the morning then I will feel better and have a more productive day, and yet I don't always do that. And I have been told that eating sugar weakens your immune system and since I am sick that is currently the equivalent of "kicking my immune system while it's down" and yet I am going to have one of Jenn's homemade cinnamon rolls for lunch. And I know that getting exercise will help me to deal with my stress better than will reading Calvin and Hobbes and eating Otterpops. And yet...

It's funny, because sometimes when I am around a child who is whining to try to get what he or she wants, I think, "Someday that child will grow up and realize that that is not the way to get what he or she wants. The way to get that would be to ask nicely and calmly" or whatever. But you know what? it applies to me to. Someday I will grow up and realize that if I really do want to feel physically good every day then I will go to bed early, and eat three healthy meals, and exercise...yada yada yada, I know, I know, I know.

So I have resolved to try harder to do what I know I should do, not "should do" in the sense of obligation, necessarily, but to do what I know will help me feel healthy and be happy and feel good about myself. We'll see how it goes. I think it's called "self-discipline."