Phobia-Trek 2011 #2 – First Success!

Today is a momentous day in the History of Phobia-Trek 2011. The first item is now being checked off the list!

I hereby declare PROCRASTINATION no longer a problem in my life!

After you are done cheering, jumping up and down, and have wiped the tears of joy from you eyes, read on. I will give you a moment…

After a week of attacking any issue the moment it arose, and taking care of things I’ve put off doing for years, it is time to say this Phobia/foible is resolved. I considered taking more time to mark this as achieved, but I have determined that this would only be putting off what I already know is true and would therefore be procrastination! So in order to avoid an endless cycle of procrastinating the day of not being a procrastinator and possible causing a black hole, or a tear in the fabric of time I will move on with the next phobia.

The next issue I have selected to work on is:

Aphephobia

I will discuss what this is, how it affects me, and steps to resolve this in a future post! Until next time my fellow Trekkers!

Phobia-Trek 2011 #1 – Post 1

After putting this off as long as I could, not really wanting to start taking down my phobias & foibles because it sounded difficult, I finally decided on an item to start with.

Drumroll please…

PROCRASTINATION!

Fitting, right? This was decided yesterday and I began working on it right away. Although it still took me a day to get to writing the post saying that I’m going to work on it. So you can still see that I need to work on it.

Yesterday I wanted to look at switching my cell phone plan from Verizon to T-Mobile. Instead of kind of looking at it, wasting time, etc. I just went to the t-mobile store and checked it out. I’m going to decide today and make any changes tonight if I choose to.

I also needed a Doctors appointment to look at my aching heel. Instead of waiting 3 more months, like I did the first time my foot hurt, I just made the call and will be taking care of it tomorrow.

Who knows what crazy wild opportunities I will have today. Check back to see what exciting news I have for you!

PhoTrek 11 is officially started!

Phobia-Trek 2011 “The List”

As promised, I have tried to put together a list of what I consider my phobias and/or personality traits that I want to change or overcome. Feel free to review the list, laugh at the list, imagine what a freak I must be from the list, or even add to the list

In no particular order:
Scopophobia = Fear of being looked at, seen or stared at.
Social Phobia / Social Anxiety = Fear of being singled out.
Aphephobia = Fear of being touched.
Neophobia = Fear of change.
Passive Aggressive
Procrastination

Each of these have certain nuances and affect me in different ways to varying degrees.

The next step is to pick an item to work on and create a plan to face the issue and attempt to overcome it. Check back soon to see what the first adventure of PhoTrek ’11 will be!

Phobia-Trek 2011

Day Zero,

I invite you to join me on an oddessey that will likely be trecherous at times, giving scary insights into the inner thoughts, fears, and dreams of my mind.

Over the next few months I will attempt to identify, examine, and overcome my fears and phobias. I will document my plans in my blog.

I am confident that there will be awkward and embarrassing moments that I hope in the end will help me become a better person.

Check back for my first post of Phobia-Trek 2011 where I will make my first attempt at compiling my many quirks.

Debt Negotiations

Today Rep. Kevin (A) drafted a new plan to tackle the debt crisis now facing the small country of Kevland (pop. 6). The new debt plan proposes new sources of revenue as well as tough cuts to the budget.

The new sources of revenue would include taking money from other people. Earning money the old fashioned way is just too hard. Now the difficult part is cutting spending. The trick in this plan is to make it appear as though you are cutting things over the next ten years, but really pushing put the cuts to the last year. By then people will have forgotten the promise to cut spending and you can overturn the cuts.

Rep. Kevin (A) is a seasoned politcian from the Awesome party. Please ignore the fact that overspending has been going on for decades while Kevin has been in power. Just know that he is here to save the day from the ‘other’ guys.

Items that Fashion forgot

In this world there are certain items that the fashion world has not even seemed to try and make look good. As summer time is now upon us I have discovered another of these lost items.

SWIM GOGGLES

I defy anyone to find me an instance where you saw a person, man or woman, and said ‘wow, check the guy/girl in the hot goggles. Someone might be hot in spite of the geeky, plastic head gear held on by a dangling over sized rubber band. But I argue that they are attractive because you aren’t looking at their face.

Good luck in finding an example to proove me wrong!

Sympathy Pain

For some reason lately I have seen a lot of commercials about Gout lately. Every time I see a picture or even an animation showing the inflammation of the joints it makes me cringe remembering how much gout really hurts.

That got me thinking of other things that we have sympathy pain for. What other things make you cringe when you see them? So here’s a short list I’ve come up with. What others can you add?

• The obvious one, being hit in the balls. Any guy will cringe at this.
• Anything dealing with fingernails. For some reason torn fingernails or anything like that freaks me out.
• Gout, this is the new addition for me.

When Global Domination ends in Tears

This past weekend my 8 year old was asking to learn how to play Risk. I have had my old Risk board game in storage for about a decade. I was apprehensive at first to bring it out because I wasn’t sure he was old enough to grasp the rules, and the strategy of the game. But I thought I’d give it a shot.

So I set up the board and invite my 10 year old daughter to join us in a fun game of Risk. I was fully prepared to only take two turns and have them be totally bored and take it all down. But to my surprise they really liked it and enjoyed ‘attacking’ each other and taking territories over.

We played for a couple of hours and then had to end for bed time. It’s worth noting that they had obviously made tactical mistakes (against my warning), and I was set up in North America, South America, and Australia, with them fighting it out in Asia, Europe, and Africa. I was steadily raising an army to wipe them off the globe! Bwahahahaha (that’s my evil laugh).

I was amazed to come home from work the next day with the game board still intact and the kids ready to play again. It was my sons turn, I had advised him to set up shop in Africa and stay there to build his army. He of course didn’t listen and happily attacked me in South America and left himself no defense. BIG MISTAKE. My turn came and I placed all my armies in South America to reclaim my territory and sweep through Africa. At the end of my turn he had no military to speak of.

The realization set in that the game was over for him and the tears came next. Somehow conquering the world isn’t as fun when you have to listen to the dead people cry. To help him feel better I let him know that his sister was only going to live through one more turn before she met the same fate.

True to my words, the next turn he watched as his sister’s army was swept off the board. It cheered him up a little, but he was still angry going to bed.

I’m not sure if I’ll play him again for a little while until he can get used to losing. Because I must say…I am a world Conqueror.

There is a reason that global domination isn’t meant for children

What would you do?

Consider this hypothetical situation:

One day your spouse tells you that they think it was a mistake to marry you and that they don’t love you. What do you do? Do you blow up and get angry? Do you try to talk it out and find a way to make it work? What is the plan?

Let’s assume you take the calm, cool, and collected approach. You begin asking questions to find out exactly what’s missing in the relationship. In your questioning you find that they enjoy being with you, they like spending time with you, and they do care about you. So a lot of the definition of Love is there. They agree that they do love you, but…

The questioning continues, then what IS missing. The answer comes back…

“I guess I’m not attracted to you”

Long pause, how do you reply? What do you say? What can you say? But in a calm way the questioning continues. Body type and height is good, they’re just not attracted to you. Apparently they were never attracted to you. There is absolutely nothing you can do…you are just not attractive.

At this point, what do you do? Do you try to convince them that if they love you and care for you that they can become attracted to you. Do you dare venture into the area of saying that you have grown to be attracted to them and have accepted certain things about their appearance? Those are dangerous waters that can easily come back to haunt you.

No matter how hurt you may be, or how frustrated you are, or angry…you still love and care about this person. You also honestly believe that they do love you and that they would be making a mistake giving up on the relationship.

What do you do? Hypothetically speaking of course.

Rapture take 2

I guess I had a mis-calculation in my end of the blog prediction. Either that or mr. Al Gore was too busy to judge all the blogs. No matter the reason, I’m still here for your reading pleasure. You can all breathe a sigh of relief.