Tag Archives: knowing how to do everything

I figure I’m about halfway to knowing how to do everything

I know I often talk and act like I’ve got everything figured out, but there’s so much that I don’t know how to do. I’m almost thirty, so assuming that I’ll probably live for another ninety years or so, if I calculate all of the things that I know how to do now, and how much time it’ll take me to learn everything else, then, yeah, I think I can still get it all done before I die. Obviously I wasted a lot of time when I was a little kid, learning how to talk, how to read, how to spend five years straight playing Super Nintendo. Everybody has to learn how to do the basics. I just wish it didn’t take so long. Two years to figure out how to get potty trained? That seems a little long.

But computers. I know how to use basically every computer. As long as the language is in English. You guys ever have one of those friends that takes your cell phone when you’re not looking, changes the language to Cyrillic, changes all the settings, makes the default brightness at the very dimmest, so you can’t see anything, turns it on mute, and then takes out the SIM card? Yeah, I’m not talking about those types of computers. And come on, that was a funny joke. They fixed it for you at the cell phone store, right? Well sorry you don’t know Cyrillic.

I don’t know Cyrillic. That’s another thing that I’ll have to learn. That and every other language. OK, maybe I’ll need to start living a little longer. Maybe I can just write off the language requirement. I mean, nobody knows every language.

Wait, wasn’t I talking about computers? I don’t know how to do any computer programming. But isn’t that just another type of language? Yeah, I don’t need to know programming. I figure once I learn business, once all of my business skills are in order, I’ll be able to pay a bunch of programmers to program anything I want.

Tennis. I’ve never even played tennis. I’m pretty good at Ping-Pong. That’s close enough. I was about to say that I’ve never even so much as picked up a tennis racket, but that’s not true. I think I was at a sporting goods store one time and I started playing around with a tennis racket on display, taking a tennis ball and bouncing it up and down like … what do you call those paddles with the string attached to the ball? And you’re supposed to bounce it up and down over and over again? Is it paddle ball? Those things are so lame. Just a total waste of the earth’s resources, making something so dumb and cheap. But yeah, I guess I really don’t know how to use those either. The sporting goods tennis racket story didn’t end well, by the way. It was a huge mess.

Now that I’m writing it all out, maybe I’m biting off a little more than I can chew here. I’m starting to panic. And the panic is only making me realize that I haven’t even begun to master any of those relaxation techniques I’ve read about online. Meditation? Medication? I’d go for either one right now. Just got to take deep breaths, drink a glass of water. But my back molars are so sensitive. I don’t remember eating ice cream and drinking cold water being such a chore. I always hear about old people and when their teeth fall out and they get dentures, how all of the sudden they love ice cream and cold water again because they’ve lost that dental sensitivity. And they come into restaurants by the dozens, immediately complaining about how it’s too cold in here, but then alternately complaining that the water isn’t cold enough, to bring them an extra glass of ice on the side.

But that doesn’t make any sense because I have great teeth. Some of the best. No braces. Barely any cavities. I say barely because I’m not counting the cavities I got when I was a little kid. Little kids are always too busy being defiant and not brushing their teeth and eating way too much candy. At least I was. I never learned how to do dental work. But do I have time to go to dental school? I’d have to fail out of medical school first. Ba-dum, ching!

Jokes. Check. Typing. Check. Internet. Check. Man, maybe I’m not going to be able to master everything. Should I just give up? Should I just try to focus on what I’m already good at? This has been a real eye-opener, this reflection, this self-assessment. Wait a second. Did I just learn and then master self-assessment? I think I did. There’s still hope. Maybe it’s not mastering everything, maybe it’s all about half-assing everything, learning just enough of everything there is to learn, the bare minimum spread out across an entire lifetime. I actually think I’m over halfway there. Maybe I won’t need ninety years after all. I mean, if I’m alive, that’ll be great. Bonus time to sit here and rub it in to everybody else how much I know, about life, about everything, literally every subject imaginable.