Things I've Learned Recently

I was cleaning the bedroom tonight (try not to faint from the shock) and found some draft blog posts I scribbled out at various times over the last few months. Sometimes when I'm stuck waiting somewhere and didn't bring a book, I'll grab a scrap of paper and start writing. Then I bring the papers home and put them down somewhere "till I can get to them." Months go by, and they get buried under other things to which I plan to get. Then by the time I unearth them, they're way out of date. This time, though, I found some I can still use. Here's the first one:

Things I've Learned Recently

1. It's impossible to sneak up on someone while wearing flip-flops.
   
2. No matter how much you pay for health insurance, your money buys you the right to wait over a month for a doctor's appointment, sometimes while in terrible pain.
   
3. It takes 2 people to catch a skittish chicken, and the process involves lots of swearing.
   
4. Sometimes we don't recognize the major turning points in our lives till later--sometimes years later. A corollary:Major events in our lives sometimes hinge on small, mundane decisions. And a corollary to that: Everything happens for a reason, but sometimes it's a really trivial or lame reason rather than a grand, cosmic one.
   
5. We'd all be better off with more conversations and fewer assumptions.
   
6. 5-day-old pizza is gross.
   
7. Most hour-long meetings could be replaced with a couple of paragraphs of information that would take about a minute to read. But since we're all inundated with information, we need to hold meetings to get people's attention.
   
8. Most hour-long conference presentations could be replaced by a few well-crafted PowerPoint slides that would take less than 10 minutes to read. But since we're all inundated with information, we wouldn't bother to read them, so we need in-person presentations to get our attention.
   
9. Despite all the high-tech medical advances, many doctors are still baffled by--and uncomfortable hearing about--pain.
   
10. Emotional energy is finite.
    
11. When life kicks us in the butt, we can laugh or cry. Crying usually makes more sense, but laughing is a lot more fun.