Freedom Friday – Page 19

Sleep

Posted on September 20, 2013September 20, 2013 by Jack Flacco

Sleep is the single most important activity anyone can do in their lifetime to increase productivity. Take it from me, a former insomniac who a couple of years ago averaged two hours sleep a night. You want to get more done? Sleep more.

Sounds counterproductive, counterintuitive and counter everything, doesn’t it? But when have my Freedom Friday posts been anything but?

I read somewhere, I won’t mention where, “an expert”, I’m assuming a time management expert, had condoned the practice of shortening a person’s sleep cycle by half-an-hour a day to gain 3.5 hours of productivity a week.

I laughed.

You know what, folks. Try it. After two weeks, tell me how much productivity you’ve gained. I guarantee after a few days you will feel the effects of exhaustion set in. Oh, it’ll seem like you’re getting a lot done. Whatever you may have had on that To-Do list seems to have disappeared.

Look closer.

Does the quality meet previous high standards? Do your accomplishments look like an idiomatic whitewashed wall? How’s the attitude? And since we’re on the subject, how’s your health?

You see, when “experts” prescribe cutting sleep in order to accomplish more, they’re actually prescribing cutting your life by a matter of years. Think of it this way. Let’s say you have a regular 7-hour sleep cycle. You decide to cut it down to 6.5 hours. Well, that’s 3.5 hours of extra time a week, which translates to 182 hours of extra productivity a year. If we look at it in terms of days, that’s 7.5 days. Yeah, a week and a bit of working harder. Over the course of 52 years, you will burn well over a full year of sleep for that extra half-hour of diligence.

What’s the reality?

I had mentioned about my insomnia. Two hours sleep every night is not an exaggeration. You can read about it in my Insomnia post. Missing so much sleep did something to me. The days blended in with one another. Noises and voices sounded louder. I began seeing things. I became paranoid. You get that way when you trick the body into believing that extra half-hour a day awake will make you more productive. Because you can’t stop at half-an-hour a day. You want to push it to an hour, an hour-and-a-half, two hours. Eventually, your body’s Circadian Rhythm crumbles. Mine finally surrendered last year, forcing me to reevaluate everything I was doing.

Nowadays, I wake up at 5 every morning after a solid 7 hours sleep. I know what you’re thinking: “That means you go to bed at 10 every night, Jack.” Yep. Well, 9:30, to be exact. By the time I settle in, it’s 10. And I know what your other question is: “Where do you find the time to do everything?” Here’s my answer: It’s not about the time given, but about the time spent. One hour of solid creativity is better than five hours of stop-and-start spurts. Time is finite in a 24-hour day. You cannot extract 25 hours from a 24-hour day. But you can optimize 24 hours by maximizing energy levels and creativity.

The thing these experts don’t talk about is the fact that sleep restores a person. Think of it as a nightly vacation. What does a vacation do? It restores a person’s perspective on life. You can get a lot more done. In fact, studies suggest sleep improves memory, contributes to a longer lifespan, controls inflammation, increases creativity, boosts athletic performance, encourages academic excellence, amplifies attention span, aids in maintaining a healthy body weight, decreases stress, assists in avoiding accidents, and helps with evading depression.

What’s my point?

Don’t listen to experts who think they know everything. Remember: An ex-spurt is nothing more than former drip under pressure.

Sleep. Enjoy your sleep. Your body will reward you with productivity you wish you had had when you cut back on the precious commodity.

Have you ever heard of cutting back on sleep to get more done? Have you ever heard of the benefits of sleep?

Freedom Friday

SimAddict

Posted on September 13, 2013September 13, 2013 by Jack Flacco

Before the internet there were video games. Some were good. Some, not so good. One in particular caught my eye and wouldn’t let go. How can I describe it for Freedom Friday?

How ‘bout like this:

“I got hooked in 1989. At first, I could control the urges thinking I could get ahead of them. I’d think—one more time won’t hurt. Just a little. The next day I’d pay for it, waking up late with a massive headache, feeling groggy and tired. Somehow, a small taste wasn’t enough. I wanted more. The longer it went on, the worse it’d gotten. I thought I could control the urges, but once something new came along I slid and crashed again.

“Over the years, as I’d vow it wouldn’t happen again, I regressed further. Sometimes not eating. Sometimes not sleeping. Until one day, I said enough. Just like that.”

I’m talking about SimCity, the incredibly addictive city simulation for PC. With every new version of the game, I was right there buying it on release day. I can’t believe how much time I had spent on the intricacies of city and population manipulation. If you haven’t played this kind of game before, it’s very simple yet difficult to master. Later versions have more complex interfaces, but the same principles apply.

You’re the mayor of a new town. In fact, you have to build the town into a thriving metropolis. The way you do this is by laying down industrial, commercial and residential zones. Then, you supply water and electricity to the zone, and wait. Yes, much like real life. You’ll soon see traffic move into the zones. Small bungalows become two-story detached homes, which in turn grow to apartment buildings. Retail outlets turn into department stores, which eventually spring to multilevel office buildings. In industrial zones, the small manufacturing shops gear up to pollution-centric factories.

The game is open-ended. It means you create your own goals and from there play to your heart’s content achieving your goals.

My goal had always been to make the absolute best town to live in for a family. So I’d have lots of open spaces, plenty of parks for walking, and fun things to do for the kids. Many of my towns had industrial areas just outside city limits so as I could avoid the pitfalls of maintaining such monstrosities.

SimCity also offers many other options for the casual gamer such as a sleek budgeting interface, a town council to appease, and various panels to check your statistics. I can’t tell you how important it is to look at the town’s stats in order to gauge future growth.

When I played, and I’m talking heavy game play, I tended to stem growth leaning toward building a quality life for my Sims instead. In other words, numbers meant nothing to me. If I knew a hundred Sims enjoyed their life in a rich environment as opposed to a thousand Sims who were unhappy in nothing but a cookie cutter municipality, I knew I had completed my job.

Of course, I did have my moments playing devil’s advocate where I’d throw a few alien invasions at my towns to measure their resilience against disaster. And sometimes I’d even start a riot or two, just to see what would happen. Thankfully, I never saved those messes and had copies of the originals I could restore.

And that’s the beauty of the game. Whatever your goal is, whether it’s building a population boom or a quiet community nestled in the mountains, SimCity will allow you to do that.

In the meantime, I have yet to fall off the wagon again as I value my sanity. Maybe next time I’ll talk about my other addiction: Age of Empires.

Have you played SimCity? What game is your addiction?

Freedom Friday

Ideas and Decisions

Posted on September 6, 2013September 6, 2013 by Jack Flacco

Most of my best ideas come to me at five in the morning while shaving. To a lesser degree, ideas also pop into my head while showering. What is it about personal hygiene that makes me want to think about the future? Does it have anything to do with washing away the cumulative dirt and grime from the day before in preparation for a new beginning? Let’s find out as I attempt to make sense of the whole thing for Freedom Friday.

When I was in that awkward age hitting puberty, I knew I had to start taking bathing more seriously. I mean, for two years I grew up on a farm in Italy, and access to running water was an issue for my family. So I understood the concept of washing my face, but beyond that, I was your typical boy running around, playing soccer in the mud, and getting all excited when my friends wanted to skip rocks down by the river. Mark Twain would have loved me.

Anyway, when I moved back to Canada with my parents, baths became a normal routine, and shaving all of a sudden needed my attention. I had just turned fourteen and my face looked like something out of Planet of the Apes. My dad had bought me my first razor. He was proud of me. I had finally reached maturity. Right, maybe physically, but mentally, even now at times, I still had the brain of a ten-year-old.

I can’t remember how long but if I’m not mistaken, shaving took me about fifteen to twenty minutes. I used to do it once, twice a week in the evening. I couldn’t do it before going to school ‘cause it took me, like, furr-ev-ah. At least, I thought. But once I was no longer a student, had a regular job, shaving turned into a daily chore. I couldn’t avoid it. My five o’clock shadow would always show up at around three in the afternoon.

Gosh, I’m reading that previous paragraph thinking, that’s an awful lot of information for a back story to what I wanted to talk about. Meh, I’ll leave it in. You tell me if you enjoyed it or not.

Okay, let’s travel to the present day. It roughly takes me five to ten minutes to shave every day now. Yes, every day, including weekends. Other than having my mind on the blade gliding on my face, my thoughts also wander. I think about things. Mull things over. Wonder and ponder on the meaning of why certain events happened the day before, the week before, that month. I don’t mean to. It just happens. Now I question if this is normal. I’m sure it is.

For instance, a millennia ago, it was while I was shaving that I’d decided to marry my wife. It was also when the idea popped into my mind about where we’d enjoy our honeymoon. Eventually, after a few years married, talk of kids came. As I would cut away the whiskers from my beard, I had convinced myself kids were a good thing to have. Believe me—I’m talking about months of shaving therapy here.

As life went on, thoughts of buying a house crept into the mix. Wanting to get a cat. Buying a used car. Getting a bigger house. Painting the rooms. Buying a new car. Planting a garden. Having another kid. Volunteering at the church. Driving the kids to their ball games. Planning vacations. Attending weddings. Attending baptisms. Attending funerals. Meeting new people. Having had enough of some people. Christmases. Easters. Thanksgivings.

Of course there were those mornings I’d think of other things too. Like, how long has that paint been peeling next to the mirror? Or, when did I last have an oil change? I’m sure it was last month. It has to be last month.

All in all, after the thousands of blades I must have consumed over the course of my lifetime, I have never regretted not wanting to have a beard.

Where do your ideas come from? Have you ever made life decisions while performing menial tasks?

Freedom Friday

My Room

Posted on August 30, 2013August 22, 2013 by Jack Flacco

Growing up I spent a lot of time in my room. Not because my parents punished me or anything. I just liked the time alone to do stuff I enjoyed doing without interference from the outside world. In some ways, I still do that whenever I withdraw from everyone to write my zombie tales of madness and survival. Let me give you a quick peek into my formative years for Freedom Friday, this way you’ll know where I’m coming from whenever I insert a reference of some obscure book, movie or music into my insane writings.

I value my time alone. How’s that for an attention-getting statement? Life moves fast. If I don’t slow down, I’ll end up wishing I had spent more time smelling the roses. I know it’s a cliché, but it works in this case—the smelling of the roses bit, that is.

As a boy, growing up in an active Italian family, I didn’t have time to think about the future. I was having too much fun enjoying the present running around with all my cousins. Not a weekend went by that we weren’t doing something with my relatives, whether it was cooking a BBQ, eating a gigantic meal or stuffing ourselves with oversized sandwiches.

Given my parents had four siblings apiece, it’s debatable since I don’t have my mom’s full history, our get-togethers were massive feasts of food and fun. My dad had recorded some of those events on one of those Super 8 cameras he had purchased. Back then, video did not come from a phone you concealed in your pocket, but from a clunky, old brick you held in your hand. Every so often I’d watch them wondering whatever happened to everybody.

When I reached the age of self-awareness, a teenager (a.k.a. the age of reason), I’d spent a good chunk of my time in my room. I don’t know why. I mean, I had friends and all, and my parents had friends, but I felt as though I needed time to understand who I was.

I learned I enjoyed playing chess. I remember having bought a portable electronic chess game that would play me on different levels, including grandmaster. I can’t say how many hours I’d dedicated to the game, by now most of that is lost in my memory. Yet, because of the time I’d poured into it, my team in grade school went on to win second place in the Ontario Regional Chess Tournament for that year.

About a year later, my interests had changed and my mind had focused more on music than anything else. I learned how to play the guitar. I guess I was pretty good ‘cause I played gigs with a few bands and had my own band by the end of high school.

How can I ever forget those summer nights when I knew my neighbors had gone to some party, and I’d be in my room, cranking out the tunes on my Gibson imitation. My poor parents. They put up so much with me, it’s a wonder they hadn’t disowned me by the time I had completed puberty.

In all this, I discovered Shakespeare. My first exposure to the behemoth playwright was in the ninth grade English class where we began studying The Merchant of Venice. At the time, I couldn’t get my head around a man possessed with the thought of collecting a pound of flesh for a debt owed. It became an obsession with me to want to find out what it all meant.

A pound of flesh? From where? The arm? The thigh? The buttocks? And when Shylock gets his pound of flesh, what will he do with it? Will he use it to heat his home? Will it be a mantelpiece for use in conversations? Or…will he reduce himself to zombie status and eat it?

From there I went on to devour Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the intense, once-a-year-read Romeo and Juliet.

Romeo and Juliet. Oh, how I fell in love with the notion of lovers wanting to sacrifice their lives for each other. It haunted my nights. It made my days nightmares. I had obsessed over the book. I read, reread, and reread the text, going to the library searching for commentaries to hear what the experts had to say. I wondered how a story so simple could make me feel so insignificant. I contemplated on those last moments when Juliet held the dagger in her hand, waiting to thrust it deep within her bowels so she could be with her lover once again, Romeo.

“O happy dagger. This is thy sheath.”

During my formative years, my room became my sanctuary.

Do you have memories of wanting to spend time in your room? What did you do? Did you learn anything?

Food Favorites, Freedom Friday

Salads

Posted on August 23, 2013May 8, 2017 by Jack Flacco

Summer’s almost over. I know, I know. Where are the fanfares to send the kids back to school? All joking aside though, what I’ll miss the most from the hottest season of the year are the salads. Some may say BBQ, which is cool and all, but for me, a fresh salad with assorted ingredients makes my summer. I’m going to give you a few quick tips about salad preparation for Freedom Friday, and I hope your next experience with the delectable greenery is a delicious one!

Our feta, onions, cucumber salad, Apr. 2013.

Living in one of the most agriculturally diverse provinces in Canada, Ontario, our backyard has gone through various transformations throughout the years. When I say our backyard, I mean Casa Flacco’s backyard, as in, behind-our-house backyard. This year, we have made the most ambitious attempt at farming yet. In past years, we’ve had a small strip of land by the side of a fence dedicated to vegetables and salads. This year we’ve increased the size of the original and added two more sections, each section separated by green space.

I don’t know what it is with our backyard. Somehow, whatever we plant turns into these gianormous jungles we attempt to tame but bless us with a bounty of crops we never had intentions of growing.

That’s how it starts. Next thing you know, near the middle of the season, our salads look like leaves from the Cretaceous Period. Our tomatoes look like pumpkins that need trucks to transport. And our zucchinis like, well, I’m not sure. Take a look at the photo.

Zucchini plant in our garden, Aug. 2009.

Seriously, sometimes I feel as if our yard has radioactive soil. If you ever hear reports of a man climbing buildings in Toronto and spinning webs, you’ll know what happened to me. Anyway, talk about getting caught up in the moment, let’s get back to the point of this post—salads.

We grow radicchio and the regular garden-variety salad. The radicchio is my favorite because it’s easy to prepare and mouth-watering on its own.

Here’s what we do:

Radicchio is a naturally bitter salad. The salt accentuates the flavor along with the olive oil. Fresh from the garden is something special to savor in the summer. Can’t be beat.

Now, as for the long-leaf salad, which is oh, so sweet and crunchy to the taste buds, the washing prep is pretty much the same as the radicchio. So, I’ll just give you the recipe we have year-round.

And there you have it. Casa Flacco’s two salad recipes I’m sure you’ll enjoy trying before the summer’s over.

Buon appetito!

Do you have any salad recipes you’d like sharing? How about ingredients? What do you like putting in your salads?

Freedom Friday

Autumn

Posted on August 16, 2013August 15, 2013 by Jack Flacco

Autumn is my favorite time of year. I know, it is weird talking about fall in the middle of summer, but if you’ll amuse me for a moment, you’ll see where I’m going with this. Besides, I’m strange that way. I was the guy talking about summer vacation while it was still snowing outside. And believe me, being Canadian, although we do get quite a lot of snow, we don’t receive half as much as some of the places in the States. Anyway, let’s talk about autumn for Freedom Friday.

I like autumn. Yes, we’ve established that. I like it because of a few reasons. In Canada, we celebrate Thanksgiving a month prior to our American counterparts. So when we’re carving up our turkey, filling our gut with tryptophan, that’s the stuff that makes you sleepy after a turkey dinner, south of the border it’s business as usual. I suppose the reason for this stems from the fact our autumns come earlier. Yet, when I look at some of the northern states, they just as equally have fall around the same time. Therefore, I’m in a bit of a quandary as to rationalize why either we Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving early or Americans celebrate it late. Don’t ask me to google it, ‘cause I’m not going to. If you know, tell me!

All right, back to this autumn and Thanksgiving bit. I enjoy our Thanksgivings here in Canada because the leaves have all changed colors and haven’t dropped to the ground yet. It makes for a perfect opportunity to take some pretty awesome shots.

Now, where I live, I’m in the middle of farm country. We have plenty of cornfields, and tons of cows, horses, sheep and any other farm animals you can probably imagine. No, not velociraptors. Well, other than Halloween. The best part? We have a vast swath of woods to discover. I have been to maybe a tenth of what my area has to offer. The rest lays dormant for me to explore.

What else? I love autumn because it’s not too hot and it’s definitely not too cold. I need a jacket in the mornings, but I can shed it by early afternoon. Also, it’s the rainy season, and if you’ve read my blog long enough you will know just how much I love the rain. I relish the water beating down on freshly cut grass. The smell is intoxicating. Ah, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

My most beloved time is that sweet moment when the leaves begin to fall and the rain has yet to dampen them to a brown hue. The crackling sound under my feet drives me to want to dive into a newly raked pile.

In that time, one single moment exists I cannot resist. Late in the evening, when the wind tosses and churns the leaves into the neighbor’s yard and I stand there under a street lamp right before it begins to rain. I can feel it. That eerie feeling when everything’s about to erupt into thunder, and the lightening takes over the skies. My nostrils fill with the smell of moss. My ears hear the breeze wafting over my shoulder.

And then—it rains. Like a symphony.

I dash into the house and the skies explode as a choir of angels heralding the second coming. It’s beautiful. It’s spectacular.

Now do you see why I love autumn?

Do you like autumn weather? Is it strange talking about the fall when we’re still in the midst of summer fun?

Freedom Friday

Stream of Consciousness II

Posted on August 9, 2013August 9, 2013 by Jack Flacco

I wrote my first stream of consciousness post with no planning other than randomly choosing the Rocky quote I had used as a springboard for ideas. Today, for my Freedom Friday series, I’d like to try my hand on an additional post armed with nothing but a quote and no idea what will come out.

Again, to reiterate a couple of things from my first post, I write about zombies. It doesn’t mean I am a zombie nor does it mean I’m obsessed with death, although in the movie I’d taken the quote from, the main protagonist is. I enjoy life and living as abundant as I can without interfering with other people’s happiness. It sounds insane but it’s true. Also, the way stream of consciousness works is whatever comes to mind is what stays on the page. No editing. It’s a snapshot of my brain.

Now, I’ve been meaning to use this quote for a while. The opportunity, though, has never presented itself. It’s from the 1971 movie Harold and Maude about the relationship between a teenage boy obsessed with death and a septuagenarian woman living life to the fullest.

Anyway, I don’t want to say anymore. Here is the quote:

Big breath. Here we go:

Lions roar not to defend their territory or because they’re hungry, but to say, “I’m alive!” Their heart beats. Their hide is warm. Every single cell at their disposal goes into that roar. “I’m alive!”

We live each day thinking we have all the time in the world, not realizing that one day we’ll be gone. Our grievances hold us back. Our doubts shroud us in darkness. Yet, it’s never too late to press onward and upward.

I’ve failed. So what, everyone’s failed. I’m afraid. So what, everyone’s afraid. I can’t. Everyone can.

Whatever is holding us back, we have to let it go. If we don’t, we’ll die—eaten away by our own miserable wants.

No one ever said life was easy. It’s not. Life is hard. Life is disappointing. We could have all the money and success in the world, yet without happiness it’s all for naught. If someone says to us they’re happy because of such-and-such or so-and-so, don’t believe them. They are lying. Happiness does not come from without, but from within. Success is a byproduct of happiness.

Glory comes to those who don’t look for it. Beauty surrounds those who are the outcasts. Joy lives in those who have dedicated their lives to the weak.

Allow your words to travel as a whirlwind into the ears of the deaf. As lightening cracks, so let your life shine to those in darkness. As thunder rumbles, move others to action. Live each day with conviction, giving life to those who are dead in spirit. Let the earth shake beneath your feet causing others to stir from their seats.

Roar like a lion. “I’m alive!”

Did my stream of consciousness session make any sense? Should I think about preparing a number III?

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