{"id":44165,"date":"2016-10-19T23:31:01","date_gmt":"2016-10-20T03:31:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=44165"},"modified":"2020-07-26T23:31:10","modified_gmt":"2020-07-27T03:31:10","slug":"when-will-i-learn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=44165","title":{"rendered":"When will I learn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"border-image alignnone wp-image-44166 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/IMG_4576-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"324\" srcset=\"https:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/IMG_4576-1.jpg 510w, https:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/IMG_4576-1-300x191.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">That my time is occasionally more important than many things?\u00a0 Like an ill-informed opportunity to meet Ron Swanson.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Earlier in the week, I saw plug on a local website for <em>An Evening With Nick Offerman<\/em>, I guess a touring appearance circuit in order to push Nick Offerman\u2019s newest woodworking book <em>Good Clean Fun: Misadventures in Sawdust at Offerman Woodshop<\/em>.\u00a0 I thought to myself, this is something that intrigues me, getting to see and meet Ron Swanson.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t learned about this event until after it had passed, like most other cool occurrences throughout the city, and being held at Georgia Tech, it wasn\u2019t in an inconvenient location.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">However, I have a lot of things that I need to do, and some things actually have a short window in which I need to complete them.\u00a0 But as a diehard <em>Parks and Rec <\/em>fan, especially of Ron Swanson, it seemed like an opportunity that I shouldn\u2019t let pass.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">I decided to go.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">In all fairness, the part of the evening where Nick Offerman spoke for an hour was great; he really speaks eloquently, with a tremendous amount of humility, and is a guy whose littlest expressions can elicit laughter from an audience, even when he\u2019s not trying to make jokes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">However my beef with the evening was primarily the fact that the book signing part, that took nearly 2.5 hours of waiting before I got to spend 2.5 seconds with Nick Offerman himself, barely having enough time to update him on the Cubs\/Dodgers NLCS game (He\u2019s a huge Cubs fan) and to tell him that I enjoyed his appearance on the Howard Stern wrap-up show, before getting a handshake and thank you from a visibly tired Ron Swanson.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">I know, 2.5 hours for a line for a popular celebrity isn\u2019t something out of the ordinary.\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard of people waiting way longer to meet J.K. Rowling, George R.R. Martin, or any other celebrity that decides to put out a book and go on tour.\u00a0 But usually, those kinds of events always seem to be held earlier in the day, usually weekends and often at a Barnes and Noble in New York City.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">But when the clock pushed past 10 p.m. on a Wednesday night, where I still had a long drive to my house to make, a task I <em>wanted<\/em> to do the same night, and needing to get up at 6 a.m. so I could beat traffic and get to work by 7 a.m. so I didn\u2019t have to slog through Atlanta rush and end up at work at 10 a.m., I was beginning to reconsider my decision-making, even if it meant not getting to meet Ron Swanson.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">The old man hippie student\/adjunct faculty member in front of me in line muttered on about sunk cost fallacy during the lengthy wait, and he\u2019s entirely right.\u00a0 By the time many people were exasperated with the wait, they all felt that they had committed way too much time into the pursuit to pull out just yet.\u00a0 I fall for it way more often than I\u2019d care to admit as well, but I\u2019d paid money to meet a man and get a book signed, and my evening was already tanked, so might as well follow it through.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Although, had the book been pre-signed, I may have reconsidered.\u00a0 By Offerman\u2019s own request, there were no photos allowed, and although I can respect and did adhere to said request, had I known that there would be zero chance at solidifying photographic evidence of having met Ron Swanson, I probably wouldn\u2019t have gone.\u00a0 This is another thing I grew salty about, the ambiguity of the appearance\u2019s details.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">The bottom line is that despite my enjoyment of the actual talk, and the 2.5 seconds spent actually getting to speak with Nick Offerman, I\u2019d say the entire evening was a sunk cost.\u00a0 It chewed up an entire evening in which I might have been more productive than sitting and waiting in a line, I didn\u2019t get to eat dinner because I\u2019m actively dieting again, and I\u2019d rather eat nothing than garbage, and I still got hit by irrational Atlanta traffic, even at 10:45 p.m.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">I left the appearance in a bad mood, got home in a bad mood, and went to bed in a bad mood.\u00a0 Never say never, but I can\u2019t see myself getting excited much less wanting to indulge in another book signing experience, especially if it\u2019s held by Acapella Books and on a work night evening.\u00a0 My time is way more valuable to me these days, and I have regrets with the choices I made, even if it meant not getting to meet Ron Swanson.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That my time is occasionally more important than many things?\u00a0 Like an ill-informed opportunity to meet Ron Swanson. Earlier in the week, I saw plug on a local website for An Evening With Nick Offerman, I guess a touring appearance circuit in order to push Nick Offerman\u2019s newest woodworking book Good Clean Fun: Misadventures in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=44165\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">When will I learn<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,62,74,45,146],"class_list":["post-44165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-angst","tag-baseball","tag-books","tag-fail","tag-triggered"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44167,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44165\/revisions\/44167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}