Sunday, September 01, 2013

Restricting choice is a disipline

So it's Sunday morning and time to get ready for a walk. No work so it is walk time and one of the few moments of exercise I get. Must remember to put in a pace fast enough so I breath heavy, like a heavy breather would breath. Except I don't know anything about heavy breathers and more about being asthmatic and breathless. Note not all asthma sufferers are heavy breathers, theirs is more akin to collapsing on the ground and clutching their chest. A bit like a heart attack sufferer but that's another subject altogether. Back at the ranch, there I am in preparation for a Sunday walk, up a little too early and getting stuff together. Or rather wasting time because I don't want to leave the house at 7 a.m. and I realise I should change some music on my MP3 player, after the AAA battery dying on me yesterday. Which is another thing, rechargeable batteries are such a bore you just have to keep recharging them and it seems they don't last as long as a normal battery does. I change rechargeable  battery, and plug the ancient player into an ancient USB port on my ancient computer. I so need to upgrade. The player folder pops up and now I have to think because I like all the music on the player and decide which music has to go in order to listen to a different album by a different group who are also old but not yet on my musical radar. Massive Attack by the way, I'd heard a track from a TV program and thought they are worth catching up on.  Then at this point I think to myself I am so restricted in musical choice because the player has only 2 gig of capacity. It is absolutely nothing. Maybe 15 albums at most. God in the olden days you could only carry about one cassette in a cassette personal hi fi player. There I am moaning about just a mere 15 albums. Which in turn also led to wasting a few minutes looking at MP3 players and whether I should purchase a new one, but decided against it.

The reason for this was sometimes it is good to be restricted in choice. It is good to discipline yourself to only those things which are available at the time and no more. Having 15 albums of music isn't really so bad, but in order to change the music I have to make a cut throat decision, something has to go in order something else can be put in it's place. It is not the end of the world but the decision is a necessary thing to do. I have no choice in the matter. It must be made. By then manually getting the player, attaching it to my computer and starting all over again with music choice I get re-familiar with the player. I don't mean this in a sexual way, which would be sick, I mean it in a understainding-how-things-work-sort-of-way.  And also knowing what music I have already saved on my computer. It's a case of knowing the limitations and capabilities of things you already possess to the optimum and therefore getting the best out of them. To be completely familiar with something is of greater advantage than an individual who buys goods because those goods are the in thing and they can be seen walking about with them and their new features and widgets. These goods are merely status symbols of who has more money and follows the crowd more than intelligence. I still haven't got a smart phone and I'm proud I don't. It's true, it's a fact. I can get three days use out of my phone and there is no smart phone going which has such a battery life.  Restricting choice is an important thing to have, it is important because it makes you weigh up facts, and make decisions. It is a discipline and in many ways a wise discipline.

Well I got to get out and have a walk now.  Happy September the first 2013.

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