No More Sleep Excuses


Dear Diary …

This is it. I am over it.

This has been used as an excuse for far too long, and it’s time for it to stop.

You are grown ups. It’s time to take responsibility for your life and stop using “I overslept” as an excuse.

Now let me be clear. Sometimes it DOES happen, and can be a total accident, but oversleeping should only happen to a normal person about one time a year. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking to all of you that use the “overslept” excuse about once or twice a week.

And there’s various varieties of you offenders.

First, it’s the “I sleep through all of my alarms” people.

The story here is always the same. It’s some person that sets 27 different alarms that go off every three minutes, and yet somehow they still manage to turn each and every one of them off and go back to sleep.

And to me … the solution is simple. Just wake up. That’s it. No other tip or trick. Alarm goes off … get up.

“But I’m just so tired and my body wants to go back to sleep.”

I’m sorry … that doesn’t work for me. It’s time to put your big boy and big girl pants on and get up anyway.

Cuz guess what? I wake up at 3:30 every morning, and it suuuuuuuucks. But I do it, because that’s the time I WAKE UP whether I like it or not.

“Do you ever get used to it?” NOPE! But I do it anyway.

Look … I know you don’t WANNA get up. Nobody does. Too bad! Not an excuse.

Another offending group of people are the “I turn my phone off at night” people.

This one is less for oversleeping and more the person who conveniently is never available when you’re in a situation and you need them. You call them 600 times, text them another 600 times, and you never hear back until conveniently three hours later they say … “Oh sorry, my phone was off.”

No. You don’t get to do that anymore. You’re a grown up and with a grown up job and grown up responsibilities. Trust me, I don’t wanna call any of my coworkers at 5am, but sometimes there’s a problem and I NEED to.

“But I’m sleeping!”

Oh well!!

When’s the last time life always went exactly the way you wanted it to?

Hey … in a perfect world none of us would ever have an alarm and we’d all live at the beach and be independently wealthy and the whole universe would get along. But this ain’t a perfect world.

Plain and simple … wake up. No more of your sleep excuses. They’re done.

Till next time Diary … I say … Goodbye.

Fix Your Freakin’ Shoes

Dear Diary …

Ladies … I am here to save you today. Save you from having to have a difficult discussion with the men in your life. I’ll do it for you. It might hurt their feelings for a little while, but the good news is they’ll just be mad at ME. Not you.

You can just play dumb and say something along the lines of … “Yeah … I mean … he said it … but actually … maybe you wanna give it a try?” That’s your approach you can take.

So here it is … men … listen up …

For the love of God and all that is wonderful in this world, would you please go buy yourself a second pair of shoes and stop wearing those sad sneakers all the time?

Guys … I know you don’t realize it because you’re … well … guys … but women pay attention to the shoes you wear and it counts for A LOT.

So when you’re walking around town, and work, and the club, and everywhere in between with your same sad pair of 1987 white New Balance sneakers, you are giving off the raw sex appeal of a virgin who still lives in his Mom’s basement.

Dude … seriously … burn those shoes and start over. They’re barely good enough to be lawn mowing shoes.

“Whatever … I don’t care about shoes.”

That may be true, but that’s not the point. SHE cares about shoes. And you care about what SHE thinks, don’t you? You wanna see a naked lady again at some point in your life, right? Well then trust me on this and get yourself at LEAST one pair of halfway decent shoes because your current K-Mart fashion ain’t gettin’ the job done here.

There you go ladies … you’re welcome. And when your man comes home and starts askin’ questions, just blame me for the whole thing.

Moving on Diary … can I just ask a big picture question here …

Who … on this ENTIRE planet is still watching infomercials?

Now you would assume the answer is “nobody,” but if that were the case, there wouldn’t be any infomercials on TV anymore, and they are still there. So that means SOMEBODY is watching and buying this stuff.

Let me give you a peek behind the scenes here at the Mornin’ Thang Broadcast Palace. We have a TV in the studio, and every morning it’s on some kind of news channel. And I hate the news. All it does is highlight everything bad in this world and make us all think things are never going to get any better. But I have no choice.

Because what I WANT to do in the wmorning is watch food. People making food, talking about food, eating food. Food is the ultimate happy place, and that’s how I think everybody should start their day … happy.

Here’s the problem … the Food Network … still to this day … shows INFOMERCIALS all morning instead of cooking shows. You’ve gotta be kidding me!!! That’s better programming than using actual shows with real humans?

Who in their right mind is watching these things? You can watch basically any show or movie you want at any time, and you’re sitting there watching Cindy Crawford’s Beauty Secrets instead … what is wrong with you????

Stop doing that. I need those to go away.

Till next time Diary … I say … Goodbye

Zack’s Valedictorian Speech

Dear Diary …

Graduation season is here once again as a bunch of fresh-faced new grads head out into the world. And when you’re at your graduation ceremony, you get to hear a nice little speech from your Valedictorian. And that’s all well and good … but really … what the heck do they know?

OK … they know a lot because they’re wicked smart, but when it comes to LIFE, they don’t know any more than you do. Sure … they kicked your butt in math, but in actual life experience you both have a long way to go.

Lucky for you … I’m here. Your grizzled old King Zack. I’ve done stuff and seen stuff. And most importantly, I have a microphone so you have to listen to me.

To be clear … I’m dumb. That’s one thing I’ve figured out for sure over the years. You know how you think you know everything right now and have your life totally figured out? Yeah … none of that is actually gonna turn out that way.

And you know what? Let’s go ahead and make that lesson on here in King Zack’s Valedictorian speech …

1. Stuff is gonna go sideways.

A lot.

Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out … you’re gonna get fired, or dumped, or a tree’s gonna fall on part of your roof, or whatever. The point is … crap’s gonna go down.

But here’s the kicker … that’s the stuff that’s gonna make you turn into the successful badass you wanna be. Have you ever heard a success story from a really rich or famous person and heard them say, “Yeah I’ve never really had to face any kind of adversity and just got really successful very easily?” No. No you have not.

So when the stuff goes sideways, don’t sit there and whine about how it’s “not fair” and “I never win anything.” Because I promise you this … if you talk like that, they you will never win anything. But if you use your failure as an inspiration for the next success, you’ll become the person you wanna be.

2. Right now … you are the least busy you’ll ever be again in your entire life

Now I know you’re gonna disagree with me right now and you’re gonna say, “But I’m so busy with graduation, and family stuff, and my summer job, and blah blah blah.” I get it. I didn’t say you WEREN’T busy, but the simple fact is … at every new phase in your life you’re gonna be even busier.

Five years from now it’s gonna be a big project at work, and planning a wedding, and trying to buy a new house.

And five years from then it’s gonna be dealing with a new baby, and trying to sell your house, and your Mom keeps asking when you’re coming to visit, and boss needs you to go to St. Louis.

And five years from then it’s t-ball practice, and dance recitals, and church, and family, and that business you started, etc etc etc.

You get the point.

I just know that every single time I look back on my life five years ago I think, “Man I had so much more free time back then compared to today.” And i know again, five years from now I’m gonna think the same thing about today.

So what does that mean? That means enjoy today and live in the moment, cuz it’s actually not as crazy as you think.

And finally Diary …

3. Live life

And when I say this, I mean live it thru your actual eyeballs, and not the camera on your phone. Far too many times when I go to a concert or an event or something do I see people watching the entire thing through the camera lens of their phone.

What’s the point?

“Oh but I wanna remember this for the future.”

OK fine, but if you weren’t really paying attention to it in the present, were you REALLY ever actually there?

If you’re gonna watch it thru a screen, then you might as well stay home and watch somebody else film it on YouTube. It’s a lot cheaper that way anyway.

OK grads … that’s it. Now go out there and make me proud. Or at the very least don’t embarrass me. JEEZ!!!!

Till next time Diary, I say goodbye.

https://youtu.be/Ie4p4OP0YnM

We Have No Common Sense


Dear Diary …

Common sense. This should be an easy one. We should all have it. But obviously … we do not.

Now I could spend the next month talking about all the ways we lack common sense, but I only got like four minutes, so let’s narrow it down to some food-related stuff … specifically when we are at restaurants.

First … to the restaurants … can we get a little more common sense when it comes to appetizers? Now, I understand that this is just an appetizer … something to start off the meal with a little munch munch munch … and then on to the main course. But … is it too much to ask to have an even number of things on the plate?

I’m sick and tired of going to a restaurant, ordering an appetizer, and getting five items on a plate. What the heck you gonna do with five of anything? If there’s two of you … there’s one left over. And if there’s three of you … now you’re one short. Now we gotta sit here like idiots trying to figure out what to do with these things.

“Hey is this one yours?”

“I don’t know … how many have you had?”

“You just go ahead and take it. It’s fine.”

“No. You do it. I insist.”

Ugh! Just put six on the plate and we don’t have this problem. Common sense people … this should be easy!

Here’s another one … if you’re a restaurant that serves bread before the meal, there is no reason why any of you should serve it alongside cold, impossible to spread, bread-ripping butter. Who the heck wants that? Room temp butter … Soft and spreadable. This should be a no-brainer!

OK … on to you … the diner. When I go out to eat and I look at the menu, I often think to myself, “who in their right mind orders this particular entree?”

Like when you’re at an awesome steakhouse … what do you think you should order? If you answered “steak,” then you are able to state the obvious. And yet, there it is … on every steakhouse menu … some sad entree of grilled boneless skinless chicken breast with something like teriyaki sauce and a boring mixed vegetable.

Who orders that? OK … I get it … not everybody likes steak … but there’s gotta be SOMETHING else you can order that doesn’t scream “boring Tuesday dinner at home when you’re on a diet.”

That’s like going to a restaurant and saying … “Yes, I believe I will have a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken from the deli. Oh … and do you have a bottle of store bought barbecue sauce that I could use to dip it in?”

You’re in a restaurant. Take advantage of that fact and let them make you something that you can’t really make at home. And then the kick on the teeth is that these are the same people that at the end of their meal say, “Ehhhh … that dinner was only OK.” Gee … who’s fault is that???

You ordered boring. And the restaurant delivered boring. Don’t get mad at them for delivering the lousy thing you ordered.

Common sense, people … This is not rocket science around here!!!

Till next time Diary … I say … Goodbye.

The No Gift Gift


Dear Diary …

I think I’m to the point now where I’m just going to tell people not to get me gifts anymore. And this isn’t some high and mighty “I have everything I need, please give to the less fortunate.” I DON’T have everything and I need, and I DO want more stuff, but now my gifts don’t even end up being gifts anymore, so there’s really no point.

What am I talking about? This …

Now when you’re an adult, it’s really hard when somebody puts you on the spot and says, “So what do you want for your birthday?” I mean, when you’re five years old you can immediately launch into a laundry list of things you want. Heck, I think my son started his Christmas list for this year roughly around 2pm on Christmas Day last year. There’s ALWAYS something you want when you’re five.

But when you’re an adult, it’s a lot harder. Especially because a lot of the things you want that are on the top of your head are just too dang expensive to be a gift.

“Hey want do you want for your birthday?”

“A car. I want a car.”

And yeah … that doesn’t really fly unless you’re married to guy who owns Facebook.

So really what I thought would be the perfect gift for me would be Amazon gift cards. That way if I did see something I wanted, I could just order it with my gift card. Or … if I wanted a really high ticket item, I could just collect these various gift cards, let them add up, and then use them.

Yeah … that would be a perfect plan. If I was the only person on earth. Problem is … I have family. Family who have access to my Amazon account. And they take my gift card. Every … single … time.

This year I got a $25 Amazon gift card for my birthday. Guess what I got myself?

A remote control car for a kid’s birthday party, and then with the remaining balance my Mom took it and bought a cookbook.

What the hell man?

“Oh I think maybe I owe you money … it said something about there being a credit on your account?”

Uhhh … yeah. That was mine.

Here’s the part that drives me crazy … you don’t HAVE to use the gift card balance. You can always opt out of it and pay in full. But they never do that. They just take my gift card and say “Oh … sooorrrry.”

And look … I understand that in a lot of ways this makes no sense at all, because you can easily just argue, “Yeah well you still have that $25, because otherwise you would’ve paid money for that kid birthday gift,” but I think you and I both know that it never actually FEELS that way if I go and buy something else after the fact. The gift card feels like free money. The gift after the fact does not.

I seriously might need to just set up my own secret secondary Amazon account. I’m not cheating in my life. I’m not lying about anything. I just need to hide all my gift cards from everybody I know . Otherwise I ain’t never gettin’ another present again in my life!

Till next time Diary … I say … Goodbye