gaze upon my exposed navel

You remember Wonder Man from The Avengers? One of his powers was the ability to slow down time, or more accurately the ability to view the world in slow motion. He could react to attacking bad guys at his leisure and just knock the living shit out of everybody.

Sometimes I think I am the Anti-Wonder Man. Things are always happening too fast for me. There's too much chaos in my brain, thoughts are bouncing around and disappearing and deadlines arise out of nowhere. I occasionally have a dream that I am driving a car down an interstate, and even though traffic is not really treacherous in any way, I am barely able to keep my car in its lane. Everything is too damn fast. Cars and fences and signs are whizzing past and I am reacting just in time to avoid a pileup. And it's sort of how I feel in my day to day life too.

I end up doing things too quickly at the last minute and fucking them up. I can't think ahead or plan. If something is looming in the distance, I don't try to get a head start on it. I wait until it is upon me and then I scramble to figure it out. I often fail.

When I was a kid I would buy a brand new Trapper Keeper at the start of every school year, and promise myself that I was going to stay organized this time. Never happened. Mind drifted. Got lazy. Papers everywhere. Desperate late night backpack searches for the one sheet with the critical assignment on it.

This self-manufactured chaos is still all around me. I am always trying to catch up on something, always flailing around for semi-answers and stopgap solutions instead of figuring shit out ahead of time. The worst part is, my life isn't that hard: it's the standard Job-Wife-Kid situation that dudes deal with around the world every day.

Here are some things I fucked up recently:

-Shrunk my daughter's sweater in the laundry. Wasn't supposed to dry it, didn't see it in there, ruined it.

-Didn't RSVP to either of two super bowl parties I was invited to. Still don't know which, if either, I'll attend. I guess I'm a game time decision. Pretty rude.

-Misplaced my wallet for like four hours.

-Didn't take out the bathroom garbage for like 4 days, even though I saw it was full. My wife had to get on my case about it for me to do it, even though garbage removal is one of my assigned tasks.

-Turned in poor work a couple of times at the office, not horrible but I got a lot of revisions from the boss, which always bruises the ego.

-Misplaced my Knicks tickets for like three hours.

-Forgot to give my sympathies when I ran into an acquaintance who just lost her mother.

-Tried to plan a vacation, couldn't find dates that worked.

-Stayed up til 4am watching Dig! on my computer (could not fucking tear myself away from it), forgot to run dishwasher when I finally went to bed.

-Attempted to auction off Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat, got caught.

-about 37 other little things like this

In general, I think maybe I am staying up too late and not sleeping enough. This has gone on for maybe 25 years. I average about 5 hours of sleep a night. I am always kind of tired and doing shit half-assedly and hoping for the best.

I should impose a midnight bedtime for the next two weeks and see if my quality of life improves.

But then when would I blog about meaningless crap?