I am sitting in Intro to Journalism class, on break, wondering what to write.

I swear, I have had SO MANY good ideas for blog topics lately. But I can’t remember  any of them.

Partly, I don’t want to. Not proud of that, but it’s  true. I have been shying away from topic driven blogging  lately because it’s  harder.  There is a lot more mental  overhead  in sticking  to a topic (even as bad a job as I usually  do) and I have been saving that for  my schoolwork.

Gonna put that annotated bibliography  assignment  to bed tonight.  I will  resist  the urge to submit it the moment it’s  done. It is not due till Friday, and I can use the extra time to let it lay fallow  then look it over again and fix whatever is broken

Pretty  radical compared  to my usual  fire and forget methodology .

But I am serious  about mending  my usual sloppy ways. I am capable of so much better. No more coasting on my native  talent. I am going  to, for once  in my life, truly  apply myself to the task at hand. I think I have made  enough progress in developing my mental (and emotional) resources  that I can focus more of my extremely  potent mental energies into a task without the system becoming unstable and freaking me out.

A rocket is only as good as its nozzle.

It won’t  be an overnight job, but the reward  is greatere use of my massive  mental might, and that always leads to a happier me.

You have to be willing to truly invest in life. That whole  “you only get out of it what you put into it” thing.  I have been the worst kind of shrivelled  up constipated miser with my energies because  depression makes you think you have no energy. But the energy is there, it’s  just waiting  for you to activate  it. And to do that, you have to put enough energy into the world in order to get the stimulation you need to activate the rest  of your  energy.

It’s why cars need to ignition  systems. They need something to put in the initial energy in before they can access the energy in the gas tank.  Depressive thinking  would have you believe that if you have to put energy into it, it’s not worth it.

But there is a heck of a lot of cars on the road that say different.

Had an exam today. Totally out of the blue. Um, for me. I am sure the keeners knew. And I was warned last week  but I forgot. So, let’s hope I do as well on this one as I did on the last.

(—)

Back home now. Ate supper, got unpacked.

Luckily, the solution to my problems should be arriving soon : my effing student loan. Tomorrow is the day when it will officially have been ten business days since I submitted the thing, and that’s how long the nice lady at the Post Office said it would take for my money to show up, so…. fingers crossed!

Just checked. Not there yet. Damn.

It will be so nice to just go online and pay Kwantlen what I owe them. Not being able to do so has made me feel like a real piker, and I hate that. I hate owing money. For me, the prompt paying of debts is not merely an act of virtue. It’s a matter of restoring my emotional equilibrium.

Of course, I am cautious. This process has had so many unexpected and inexplicable delays that I would not be surprised if I got an email tomorrow telling me they would only release my money if I literally jumped through actual hoops.

Hoops that are on fire.

Still, obviously, I am looking forward to putting this whole thing behind me. Pay off Kwantlen, pay off Joe, get my texts, and maybe have enough left over for a new pair of shoes and a pair of decent gloves.

That will be such a huge load off my mind that I have trouble even imagining on it. For a responsible sort like me (who also loves predictability and hates uncertainty), this whole thing has been stressful as hell. And stress drains me.

It’s hard to say exactly what my relationship with predictability is. In many ways, I hate it. Predictability is the opposite of mentally stimulating, and I have an outsized need for mental stimulation. Hence my enormous MP3 collection. Thousands of songs, and yet I still feel like I have heard it all (and far too recently) sometimes.

I suppose the distinction is that when it comes to my personal activities, I seek novelty and stimulation, but when it comes to my actual life, I want things to just fucking work. And make sense.

I realize that this is, in many ways, a fragile disposition. Expecting the world to make sense is probably not an optimal mindset for long term happiness, because most of the time, it won’t.

And it’s not like I have a total psychological breakdown if things don’t go how I think they should. It just makes me angry, sometimes with that dangerous long burning anger that just sits there in your chest increasing your background rage level.

Still, sometimes I wish I was more adaptable. I mean, for a Taurus, I am very flexible and adaptable. But that’s like being really tall for a midget. It’s not saying much.

I would like to be better at handling the unexpected, emotionally as well as logistically. It’s a tricky equation with me, because the predictability I crave would come with a big price tag in terms of exerting way, way more control over the variables of my life than I am comfortable with.

I only feel safe when I have the breathing space and maneuverability to respond to situations however the situation dictates. A fixed response seems, to me, to be a recipe for disaster. You have to be like water, and adapt.

That kind of precludes predictability. Or does it?

I am one complicated dude.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.