He just keeps going around, and around, and around…

Was having lunch at local eateries Bob’s Sandwiches (it’s a diner, and I love diners) when it occurred to me that my mind is always working, always probing, always trying to figure things out, always grinding out more information via deduction, always distilling and purifying, and always, always busy.

It’s like some steampunk steel factory in here.

And the thing that powers the whole show is a hamster on a wheel, and the hamster’s name is Anxiety.

My deep down sense of unsafeness keeps that rodent running 24/7. It doesn’t even sleep when I’m asleep. It never stops, and much of my psyche is built around what to do with all that nervous energy. That’s why I need so much mental exercise. It’s the best way I know to use that energy, and even that is not one hundred percent effective. A lot of forms of mental exercise are also mentally stimulating, and that creates its own energy and its own stream of sensation to process.

And my in-box overfloweth.

If one could peer into my mind like it was a simple diorama, one would not suspect that it’s the hamster powering this sparks and steam factory. Because there in the center of it all, in the place where time flows like water and all things come together, is that fiercely burning star that, like its owner, is painfully bright and incredibly hot. It acts like a fusion reactor, and I have layer upon layer of shielding protecting the outside world from its intensity and its radiation.

It would be easy to think that must be my power source. But it occurred to me today that it isn’t. It is merely the product of intense internal pressures and often acts not as a source of energy but a way to use it up. An outlet for all the pressures that make my inner landscape so seismically unstable. Thinking it is the power source is like thinking a light bulb is a power source because it’s so shiny.

so while I probably do get some of my motive force from emotional geothermal taps, most of that energy is used simply to keep the forge of my creativity white hot and ready. The energy that keeps the lights on and my inner computer powered up is strictly hamster-electric.

On a deep level, I feel like if that hamster ever stops, I will die. The lights will go out and never come back on again. I know this to be irrational, but that doesn’t change what is going through that little hamster’s tiny rodent brain : fear. Fear of stopping. Fear of not being able to start again. Fear of what might happen in the dark. Fear of my own inner demons.

I keep talking about part of me still being that scared little animal who is always desperately looking for the way out and, if cornered, is perfectly capable of savage violence.

Turns out that scared little animal was a hamster all this time.

Today was not good.

Today’s class was Sketch. I wrote my skit of the week last night. And I knew it wasn’t very good.

Even getting to the point where I had written a bad skit was agony. I wrote the beginning of the skit then got stuck. It was turning out to be far harder to write than I thought it would be, thanks to the summer brain drain. I just couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t think of idea, couldn’t plan things in my head. And that made me start to panic, which of course just made it worse.

Adrenalin is great for outrunning a saber tooth tiger or helping you win a fight, but it is terrible for complex thought.

Feeling awful, I decided it was time to check out the files full of skit ideas I have in order to get an idea for something easier and more fun to write. But they ended up just making things worse because to be honest, most of them were not that good. At least, they were not good for the purpose of writing a skit for class. They are quite high on the wackiness factor, which is boffo if you are making a Monty Python’s Flying Circus type genre-bending TV show but not so great if you are writing skits to be performed on stage.

And some of them are just…. sad. We came up with them a decade ago, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised if they seem a tad unsophisticated to me now. But I had this idea that I had this kickass secret weapon in the form of over 1200 awesome skit ideas, and the reality is… not so much.

Of course, my nuclear option is to use one of the actual skits I wrote way back then. But now I am kind of afraid to look at them, in case they don’t hold up either. I would rather go on with the feeling that I am brilliant at skit.

Otherwise, I may just fall apart,

From the minute I finished the lame-ass skit to when it was presented in class today, I was dreading it. Waiting my turn in class was very bad. I had several panic attacks. And of course, I ended up being second last because Jackie decides who is going next by asking “OK, who wants to go next?” and I simply cannot compete with the young people with their faster reflexes.

The only reason I didn’t go last was because my bud James held back so I wouldn’t be last. I guess because I was sitting next to him, he could see how frustrated I was. Thanks, James!

So I had panic attacks and got very depressed, and started to wonder if I was funny at all, and all that craziness. It was not a pleasant morning.

But I feel somewhat better now, and after I sleep I will feel a lot better. And then tomorrow is another day.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.