You ever go through your head, thinking to yourself, “You know, this is really not worth doing.” I do.

It’s one of those decision matrixes we all sift through during various times of our lives. Somewhat subjective, emotional and psychological, with tufts of facts and logic intertwined. You weigh things you don’t really like or, conversely, something you really love. You toss in the variables. Shake it up. Do I want to go to that minor league hockey game?
 
First of all, you consider the very basics. Is it worth the time, effort and cost? Do you actually enjoy going to minor league hockey? Is there some core reason(s) you want to go (Just for the experience? To treat a friend? Something novel to take up spare time?)?
 
After allowing these thoughts to sift and saturate you mind, there’s a framework or at least one major decision-making stage/point that drives you to say “yes” or “no.” More and more, I find myself deciding a lot of things are not worth doing.

Which begs the question: “What is worth doing?” What types of activities are you willing to undertake even though they come with frustrations or inconveniences?
 
Over the past several years, I’ve developed a list of things “not worth doing.” They include:
 

• Attending any professional or Division I college sporting event – too costly; too crowded; hassles with parking and traffic; too many timeouts kill the action.
• Traveling, unless it is for family or someplace I REALLY want to visit.
• Books that don’t live up to their reviews (which you can’t find out until you start reading them; so, if I get part way in and find it dull, then I don’t finish it; I would never have done that five years ago; I only want to read plots that entertain me and not waste my time on dull storylines).
• Going to movies in theaters unless it’s extremely original, gotten strong reviews from three sources and it’s a topic that grabs and grips my attention. Otherwise, give me Netflix.

Recently, I attended a high school boys basketball game, with the winner heading to the state tournament. Easy to park. No cost for me to attend, as I entered with a referee buddy who was working the game.
 
Before play started, I wanted to get popcorn. I asked another fan next to me, who had a container, how long the wait was. He rolled his eyes and said, “Really bad.”
 
I internally debated whether getting in the popcorn line was something “not worth doing.” Going back and forth in my mind, I decided to go for it. I love popcorn and like to compare taste and texture from one high school to another. The line moved quickly. The popcorn tasted good. It cost a buck. Can’t beat that.
 
The game was an awesome experience, sitting two rows from the courts, no TV timeouts, the kids playing as hard as possible. Everything on the line. The entire experience was totally worth doing.
 
Watching high school and college Division III sports are at the top of my “worth doing” list. Purchasing popcorn while waiting in a long line might just make it, too.

​If you are fortunate to live long enough, you sign up for social security payments. That happened to me recently.
 
You don’t think your time will come, but it does. It’s strange.
 
If you haven’t reached this stage of life, you too will go through a number of logistical and emotional issues when you choose to start receiving your earned benefits. If you’ve already reached the age to receive your social security benefits, perhaps the rest of this column will resonate with you.
 
One of the first steps is actually saying to yourself, “I will set up my social security payments.” You have the option to wait as long as you want, or start getting your money deposited to your account before your expected date of full benefits. It’s a choice. You have to make a decision.

That makes you think about your age, the aging process, how long you will live.  Hmmmmmmm….. You don’t sit down often and go through those considerations in your head.

You face your mortality. You look inside yourself and think things like, “How healthy am I? Will I live six more years or 26 more years?” You don’t know the answers to these questions, which makes the process mentally difficult.
 
It also gives you angst. You squirm. You want to think life goes on and on, even though your logical mind tells you (when you choose to focus on this, which you don’t do often) says it won’t. There will be a date where you pass, and you then must say to yourself, “Does it make sense for me to receive my benefits sooner rather than later.”
 
Then, you must also look into the issue of continuing to earn money by other means. Do you need extra cash beyond your SSN payments? Yes, you do. So, how will you earn this? Do you have a pension? Do you have other savings? Do you plan to work at some part-time or full-time job? If so, how many hours will you put in, and how many years do you plan to do so?

Those are a lot of hard questions which force you to consider your desires, what you’re good at, and your projected health. And you must look into the future at your health to determine what “could” you work at (read: be physically able) and how many hours could you realistically put in.
 
All this doesn’t even address the issue of what you might want to do with additional spare time as you’re considering easing your way out of full-time employment and moving into what often gets described as “retirement,” which isn’t really an accurate description. It’s highly unlikely that the majority of people retire. Most continue to work, albeit at something less demanding than when they put in the hours at a full-time position.
 
How will you stay busy? What engages you? Is there some craft you’ve waited to take up, and now’s the time to do it? What types of activities give you the most joy?
 
These are the fun questions to ponder, the ones that make the process enjoyable as you move forward in the years ahead. There’s a balance to all this. I haven’t found it. Perhaps we never do. That’s okay. That seems to be part of life in general – figuring out what’s next, making good decisions, finding balance and some things that you look forward to in the years ahead.

​Several months back, a good friend of mine mentioned how too many people drink the Kook-Aid these days. I replied, “Don’t you mean the ‘Kool-Aid?’”
 
“No,” he said, “The Kook-Aid.”

“What do you mean by that?,” I asked.
 
As soon as the words were out of mouth, I knew the answer, but let him explain it anyway, as he mentioned people diving down the rabbit hole following conspiracy theories based on unsubstantiated remarks with no factual basis. He was able to laugh and poke fun as this current syndrome in our world, where people dig for information to confirm their biases. They want to drink the Kook-Aid.
 
I love the phrase. It reminded me of a recent chess match with another friend. While we played, a blurb from Tucker Carlson played in the background. He wanted to stop the match and listen.
 
As a journalist, it struck me how the blurbs emitting from the laptop were scripted to push the listener down a very specific path. My buddy “wanted” to believe. I was more critical and pointed out repeated incidents of how the broadcast was designed to take a snippet from here and a snippet from there to buttress Carlson’s perspective. He wasn’t factually investigating anyone. He was pushing people to drink his Kook-Aid.
 
We all face a challenge to inform ourselves of highly complex issues that for the most part we know nothing about. I remember in college taking one of my favorite courses that addressed public opinion. We were asked to write down any subject we thought we had enough knowledge on to consider ourselves an expert. It was quite the amusing experience, as the professor drilled holes in one student after another as they tried to portray themselves as knowledgeable on something they knew nothing about.
 
As we listed to Carlson’s opinoncast that evening, I struggled mightily to explain to my friend how those shows are structured to make certain people look bad, not allowing them time to respond when the answer might conflict with the head of the show. This occurred several times, as a person being interviewed was cut off as they tried to answer a question, and then the focus went back to the talking head’s rant.
 
Failing to open my friend’s mind on that front, I then attempted to get him to understand how 9-second video clips do NOT tell a story. Nor do they create an accurate narrative of an event. Instead, those clips are typically designed to raise your emotions, get you excited (angry, sad), so you start yelling in unison at the television set. Watch a few of those quick clips some night, then analyze them afterwards for content and what you’ve been informed about, and you’ll find that you’re no more educated than you were before the show. Only more agitated.
 
We need to teach people ways to better understand how the news media (if we’re going to attempt to call electronic communications part of the “news”) use content to manipulate how you think and feel. The dynamic interactions we have with others will benefit from recognizing what we don’t know, and how an announcer’s view pushes us in one direction or another.
 
If we can gain a deeper understanding of how the media operates and think rationally with a critical mind, drinking the Kook-Aid might just become a thing of the past. And, we’ll all be healthier.

​Sometimes we have too many choices in life. This came home to me last week while shopping at Walmart for skin lotion.
 
If I had a go-to brand, there would have been no problem. Given there are so many choices, I tend to switch from time to time to try something new. Maybe it will smell better. Maybe it will make my skin softer.

I use the lotion after shaving to get rid of the dryness of my skin. The most recent purchase came on vacation when I bought a pump-action bottle that now has congealed and clogged, necessitating the search during the weekly shopping trip.
 
Heading down the lotion aisle reminds one of the toilet paper and cereal aisles: HOW CAN THERE BE SO MANY DIFFERENT TYPES OF THESE PRODUCTS? Who buys all of them? How is the market segmented? It boggles the mind.
 
It reminds me of the stories we would hear when Eastern Europe broke up after the Berlin Wall fell, and how shoppers couldn’t find toilet paper, meat or produce. During that point in history, I used to wonder what the citizens of those countries experiencing shortages would do if they came to the U.S. and were exposed to all the sizes, colors and shapes filling the shelves or our supermarkets. They’d be paralyzed.

That’s how I felt last week. Unable to make a decision. I couldn’t even come up with a decision variable matrix. Should I seek a specific scent? Should I want something more “moisturizing” or “smoothing” or “soothing?” What the heck, I don’t know.
 
As I went back and forth, up and down, looking, mentally sorting, discarding, considering, fantasizing, wondering and ultimately stymied, two elderly women came down and asked the stocker to find them a version of Gold Bond. That gave me a break, but also added to the confusion, because there was another choice.

Tea tree oil? Coconut? Lavender? Argan oil? Pump-action? Squeeze bottle? Sixteen ounce size or 32-ounce size? The questions kept arising.
 
You can go cheap or expensive. You can choose a name brand or something generic.