Monkey Diaries Archive

Imagine being a sundae. I’m not kidding. Imagine it for a second. You’re the best sundae you can be, filled to the rim with three flavors of ice cream made from the freshest ingredients. You know you’re not perfect but you’re laden with nuts, sprinkles, chocolate sauce, fresh fruit… we’re talking the works. And a waiter picks you up and presents you to someone who takes a few bites, saying how much they are enjoying the sundae when they suddenly stop and say, “You know what, this is good, but it would be so much better if it had real whipped cream instead of Miracle Whip. Can you fix this and bring it back?” How would you feel? I know, as a sundae, you can argue that you wouldn’t feel anything and I’d agree with you. But what if you replaced the sundae with a human being, what then? The preceding metaphor is essentially a way of explaining to someone the theory of what I like to call, "The Upgrade Speech." I only raise this issue because I’ve been given the upgrade speech so many times by so many people, both romantically and socially, that I’ve got the whole speech committed to memory. Hell, I can even customize the speech for different problems and make them all plausible. Needless to say, it hurts just as much today as it did the first time I heard it when I was 14. In other news, I’ve been so slammed at work lately that I haven’t had time to do the thing I enjoy most, which is procrastinating. You can’t procrastinate when you’ve got deadlines, expectations and the looming threat of unceremonious dismissal from your chosen profession. I know I’ve tried and it just doesn’t pan out like you’d think it would. What to do and how to do it? Those are the prevailing questions in my mind today.