Anxiety and identity

So I am officially freaking out over this ID thing.

To refresh the public memory, the very last step in my applying to VFS for their program of sheer writing awesomeness is to submit a photo or scan of my valid government issued identification card.

And it is that step that is proving tricky, because in order to do this thing, I have to get my ass to the local licensing office, and with my leg problems, that could prove tricky.

My original plan was to just take the bus there and back, or possibly to get Joe to drop me off there and take the bus back, and get the damned thing done.

But my knee has started getting really, really stiff when I use it too much, and I am worried about what kind of damage I would do to myself if I did the relatively minor amount of walking involved.

Also, I am going to have to do a fair bit of walking Wednesday, when I take the campus tour and do the “information session” (which sounds suspiciously like an interview with the edges filed off to me) and I want to kind of save up my gimp points for that. I am not looking forward to limping around the VFS campus in Gastown, but I will be damned if I am going to postpone this and give myself a chance to dick around with it and lose my nerve.

And anyhow, as far as I know, this knee thing is not going to be getting any better any time soon, so why postpone it when it might make no difference at all?

So basically, what all this means is that I will need a drive to and from the ICBC licensing bureau, and that means that I will need a ride from Joe. I hate to impose upon him further, but this shit has to get done. There are no other options.

But of course, it’s not that simple. See, I was browsing through ICBC’s website, not yet at Anxiety Code Omega, when I saw the breezy little area where it mentioned, in passing, that those getting new ID cards should expect to get them in the mail within four to six weeks.

Four to six WEEKS? Are these people insane? Don’t they know how important ID can be? When I originally got my BCID, I am pretty sure they printed it out and gave it to me right there. I sure as heck didn’t have to wait six weeks!

It is possible, says the voice of reason and sanity in its prim and precise voice, that they gave me a temp ID instead and then I got the full one in the mail way later, and I have just forgotten.

And I am really trying to listen to that voice, I really am, but it’s hard to hear over the much louder voice of FREAKING THE FUCK OUT BECAUSE MY DREAMS WILL BE DASHED BY A STUPID FUCKING ID CARD.

And the thing is, I know I am being irrational. My sane, rational, even paced mind has not been idle while I lose my fudge. I know that I could, for instance, get Joe to drop me off there and take a cab home.

The cab will cost between twenty and thirty bucks, and that’s a little painful, plus for all I know, I will have to pay some other huge fee just to get them to reissue the damned ID, but the point is, that can be done.

It doesn’t solve the four to six weeks problem… if that turns out to be an ironclad truth immutable and eternal, then I am just going to have to throw myself on the mercy of the court (in this case, VFS) and ask them if they can waive said requirement until I get my new ID.

I have already emailed VFS asking if such a thing is possible. No reply yet, because of course, either reply would have done something to resolve my anxiety and we can’t have that, can we?

CAN WE? *eyeball twitch*

I swear, I feel like I am turning into Twilight Sparkle at the end of Lesson Zero.

Speaking of ponies, I saw an episode today that made me really uncomfortable, and I am gonna vent about it here.

The episode is called May The Best Pet Win, and in it, speedster and all around sporty girl Rainbow Dash realizes she is the only one of the six main characters that doesn’t have a pet, and so animal-loving Fluttershy shows her a wide array of pets.

So far so good.

But in order to decide which of the top contenders will get to be her pet, Rainbow Dash decides to put the potential pets through a grueling competition to see which one is fast, agile, cool, and so on enough to be her pet.

Already I am deeply uncomfortable. Making animals compete for your pleasure is wrong, wrong, wrong, and it is especially wrong in a situation where these are all pets who want an owner really bad.

It’s like you are making orphans compete to see who gets to come home with you. It’s just plain wrong!

But the worst offenses is near the end of the episode, when the field has been narrowed down to the best five or six contenders, Rainbow Dash makes them follow her through a genuinely painful and dangerous gorge, causing one potential pet to get wounded on some thorns and others to suffer other minor mishaps.

And the worst part of THAT was when the pets had to make it past these giant monsters that live in holes in a very narrow pass and shoot out when you go past them like eels snapping at fish.

This was a very clearly lethal challenge, and so in that one case, she was not just making the orphans compete, she is making them fight to the death.

And I am totally not cool with that, and think it is a terrible thing to be teaching kids,

Well, I think that absorbed enough anxiety for me to go lay down and try to get control of my self.

Talk to you tomorrow, folks!