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I heard that this morning while properly caffeinating myself. How have I gone 28 years without ever hearing and appreciating Mr. Waits? Seriously. There are two things in life: There’s whatever this is, and there is Tom Waits.

Onto this weekend:

I am not 18 anymore. In fact, I may be an old man.

This weekend proved to me that I can no longer do some of the things I used to be able to do not that long ago.

Friday: let’s skip the part between waking up and after dinner. No need to dwell on that here. After that, a friend called to say he and his buddies (all about 23 years old) were going to a house party. So I said “sure, why not?”

Well, I ended up staying up until 4am.

Saturday: Didn’t do much during the day, but at night I went with some friends to a boston harbor cruise for a friend’s semi-pro football team. Then I went to a small afterparty.

Stayed up til 4am.

Sunday: Same friends that went to the house party were having a cookout at their place. Went there, then stopped by Evan’s, and ended up getting to sleep by, I don’t remember.

Monday: Cookout at my place with the McIntire family.

It honestly doesn’t sound like much, but man it adds up. I am usually in bed by 11:30 PM and wake up by 5:30 AM. Staying up until about an hour before I’m usually awake was very, very strange. It took me until yesterday to fully recover and start sleeping normally again.

When I was younger, I was easily able to stay up all night and sleep all day. No problem. But not now. It’s amazing how much you change in a few years.

Now to add some randomness to this here blog post. I have a question about the balance of life. Let me know if this is how you picture things:

1. Posessions, Professional, and Opportunities High, but Personal and Emotional Low- Things are going great for you professionally and in the spheres of life that deal with money and accomplishment. But the personal, touchy feeling things are low.

2. The Opposite: Personal and Emotional are High, but Posessions, Professional, and Opportunities are Low- Things are great in your personal life, but nothing is happening in the other parts of your life.

3. Even: Things are either going great in all aspects, they’re going all poorly, or they’re just okay. Either way, things going well in one aspect does not influence a negative reaction in the other.

I’m only asking this in the most abstract of ways. I’m trying to understand some of the complexities of interdependencies and spuriousness. Just something I’ve been toying with. Trying to figure out a better way to visualize balance.

And finally, I’ll leave you with this. I just read an article that details the 26 most common types of cognitive biases. Some of my most favorite:

1. Choice-supportive bias- the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.

This bias immediately fires off an association in my mind with the idea of having a political stance. Think of how statistics and polling can be manipulated to support or bash any idea, person, etc.

2. Contrast effect- the enhancement or diminishment of a weight or other measurement when compared with recently observed, contrasting objects.

The idea that something described in the past can lose validity based on a more recently explanation.

3. Endowment effect- the tendency for people to value something more as soon as they own it.

This is exactly how I feel about Nissan cars and Samsung phones now that I own them. I immediately started preparing myself to defend my purchase though there is absolutely no reason for it.

4. Information bias- the tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.

How many times have you seen this? In a previous job, a boss (well, not really a boss, but someone far above me) wanted statistics on EVERYTHING, although he based none of his actions on them. He wanted every little bit of information for absolutely nothing other than his own ego.

5. Mere exposure effect- the tendency for people to express undue liking for things merely because they are familiar with them.

I love this idea. When you are having a conversation with someone and they bring up, say, a web site you’re familiar with (especially if it is outside the mainstream and a little bit obscure), you’re most likely to have a positive association with it…..not because you have given it much thought…but instead, because you’re familiar with it.

Okay, there’s my random post for the day. And I’m out.