w “post-prandial” sounds dirty, but rest assured, it just means “after a meal”.

But don’t worry. The dirty stuff comes later.

Took a nap after lunch, even though I should know by now that doing so is a very bad idea. Whenever I do that, I end up having the un-fun troubled tortured kind of sleep that leads to my waking up sweaty, dizzy, disoriented, disgruntled^[1], and depressed.

The truth is, I never know when to sleep. In my “waking” hours I almost always feel a little sleepy (yay untreated sleep apnea) and theoretically, I could sleep at any time.

In fact, sometimes it feels like I could sleep for a year and still want more.

But that’s no good. I tried sleeping until I am no longer sleepy, and all it lead to was my wasting 12 hours out of 16 for a day and not getting any further ahead in the game.

Not that it never works. There’s been a few times where I did, indeed, catch up on my sleep and reach a point where I no longer felt sleepy.

But I still felt like crap. So, at best a partial victory.

It’s funny. Right now I have two contradictory thoughts (out of many) in my head : “I really shouldn’t sleep in the afternoon” and “god I want to go back to sleep!”.

Then again, I think we all have a spotty track record when it comes to doing what we know we shouldn’t do.

So maybe I will get a little more sleep this afternoon.

But not until I am finished blogging!

The words, as you might expect from my discombobulated (what a fun word) mental state, are not coming easy right now. I definitely feel like I am trying to swim upstream just trying to articulate my thoughts.

I wish the caffeine from my diet cola would kick in and chase the cobwebs away.

Speaking of which, I am increasingly certain that I have developed a caffeine addiction. The latest evidence occurred last night, when I was quite tired but wanted to keep playing Skyrim, plus I was feeling snacky, so I had some of the pizza I ordered last night along with my usual liter or so of diet cola.

And wow, suddenly I felt great.  Not sleepy at all, full of confidence and joie de vive, ready to take on the world, or at least Tamriel. ^[1]

That’s just the latest evidence, however, and as a data point, it’s weak. The main body of evidence is as simple as it is convincing : I’ve started to crave diet cola.

And not just a little. When the craving hits me, diet cola seems like the most wonderful and delicious beverage in the world. I practically drool for it. Coke ads from the 80’s don’t picture Diet Coke as looking as good as it seems to me when I crave it.

That’s as sure a sign of addiction as I can think of : fetishizing the object of addiction. That’s why pot-heads buy so much pot merch.

Right now, the cravings are relatively harmless because I rarely act on them and as a result they do not happen often. Instead of acting on them, I redirect that energy into happily anticipating the next meal which, as part of my usual routine, will feature that sweet, life-giving diet cola.;

And as addictions go, it’s pretty benign.

And common. In becoming hooked on caffeine, I am merely joining the rest of humanity. Whether via coffee, tea, or cola, the whole world uses and enjoys their caffeine. It’s the heart’s blood of the world. If all the caffeine in the world disappeared one day, civilization would collapse as millions of angry, sleepy people confusedly riot in ther streets and Starbucks franchise owners worldwide have to flee for their lives.

So in reality, all that has happened is that I have joined the rest of the human race.

The addiction would explain why I have felt so anxious, tense, and irritable lately. I am always in a state of either caffeine withdrawal, which makes it hard to think or stay focused so I have to, as I said earlier, “swim upstream” to get anything done, or I have the caffeine in my bloodstream and that builds up a lot of energy that is definitely not all absorbed by playing Skyrim, and the excess turns into free floating anxiety.

Then again, maybe I just need to masturbate. ^[3] I haven’t done so in weeks, which is bad enough. But in those weeks, I have been stimulating myself via erotic Skyrim activity of all sorts, and thus, shall we say, turning up the pressure.

The thing is, I don’t feel horny. It’s not like hunger or thirst or the need to use the bathroom, where the body clearly signals what I need. My body isn’t saying anything.

Whether or not that is caused by my antidepressants or my simply being so out of touch with my primal emotions that they could have moved to the Moon and I wouldn’t know,. is a matter open for debate.

We could even have a mass debate.

Instead of any actual drive towards sexual release, all I have is the dull ache in my testicles that nearly all men are familiar with and which I easily ignore most of the time.

And then, clueless and disconnected as I am, I end up wondering why my balls “suddenly” hurt and make me a little queasy.

It’s because the balls are stupid and keep making sperm whether it’s getting released or not, dumbass. Take care of it!

Then again, I am a dude who can get so into a game he is playing that he forgets to eat, so I suppose my sexual dereliction is to be expected.

It’s like me and my body barely know each other. I’d be a lot happier if I learned to take care of myself properly. And I am working on it.

I just hope I don’t fall apart before I get there.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

[[2]] That’s the name of the world (or possibly the country)  which contains the province of Skyrim, which is where the game of the same name takes place. [[2]]

Wow, I think this may be the first time in history that I had a brilliant idea for a blog topic before it was too late because I had already written the damn thing.

The best ideas seem to come to me in the time between 7 pm and 8 pm. My power hour, I guess. Something to think about in the future.

Anyhow. What I want to talk about tonight is a revelation I had not half an hour ago about myself and what I want to do to make myself more comfortable in my own skin.

Other people’s skin never fits me.

It was a double barrel revelation,two insights that happened as one.

First off, I realized that a lot of my negative self-talk revolves around my lapses in memory, clumsiness, and general cluelessness. My inner prosecutor loves that stuff.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. That was the other barrel of the revelation. There’s a completely different way of looking at things that is much kinder and less malign version than my usual self-loathing.

I’m not a total loser that sucks at life and therefore sucks in general.

I’m a hilarious sitcom sidekick! I am that lovable goof Michael, the nerdy friend of the main young male character. Let’s call him Tad.

Tad : Well yeah, he’s brilliant. He gets straight As without even studying. He knows more about everything than I know about anything. But boy, that kid needs a minder. Always walking around with his head in the clouds, thinking the big thoughts, not really paying attention to reality it all.  I’ve had to stop him from walking into traffic like a dozen times and I’ve only known him for six months!

Tad’s Dad : (nods) A wise man once said that “those who live with their head in the clouds are at the mercy of the puddles in the road. “

Tad : Exactly! And he’s always forgetting things. Things nobody should forget. Like his own phone number! Or what class he’s in. Things like that.

Tad’s Dad : You know what I think?

Tad : No, what?

Tad’s Dad : That he’s awfully lucky to have a good friend like you looking out for him.

Tad  : (blushing but pleased) Aww, DAD!

Tad : By the way, who was the wise man who said that stuff about the puddles?

Tad’s Dad : Me. Just now. You were here.

Tad : (eyerolls) By which you mean you don’t remember.

Tad’s Dad : Give that man a cigar!

Tad laughs, pleased with himself.

Tad’s Dad : Only not really, because you know how we feel about the tobacco industry.

Tad : (eyeroll)  Yeah, I kind of figured that out by myself.

That’s an excerpt from my never before released pilot. “Brad and his Dad”. Watch for it this fall on nothing!

Actually, as I wrote that, I noticed three things :

1. That was a lot of fun to write
2. And also easy. Almost like I should be writing this kind of thing for a living. I wonder if there’s a school that helps you with that… 😛
3. At some point, in the back of my mind, I started writing it with Family Ties in mind. Michael J. Fox as Brad, Stephen Gross as his Dad. Guess I really do have sitcoms burned deep into my mind!

Anyhow^[1], back to the point I am almost positive I was trying to make. By simply re-imagining myself as a  goofy but lovable sitcom character, I can access deep, powerful symbols in my mind and use them to defeat my inner prosecutor.

Because seriously…. fuck that guy.

This might seem like a very strange form of therapy to someone who doesn’t know me very well. But for me, therapy is all about the re-imagining. What one of my favorite poets., MC 900 Foot Jesus, called “dreaming it anew”.

If I can come up with a better dream of myself, a new and superior dream that better solves the problem of myself, then I can become that dream.

That’s one of my most extraordinary powers.

It’s also extraordinarily dangerous.

These revelations also fit with my recent thoughts about the scrappy underdog archetype, and what makes it work.

So far, it goes like this :

People don’t need you to succeed. They just need to see you trying as hard as you can. As long as you can do that, people will love and even protect you.

I learned this lesson from a show called Dirty Jobs, hosted by Mike Rowe. Every episode, he showed up at a work site for some crazy awful job, try his absolute best to do the job while all the workers were watching, fail miserably, and after that, they all loved him like a brother.

In Machiavellian terms, it’s brilliant, because by trying as hard as he can but failing, he gained the workers at the site’s respect while also establishing that he is both a regular, relatable, working-class kind of guy and yet, absolutely no threat to anyone’s position in the existing hierarchy.

All you gotta do is try.

I wish I had known that when I was being such a little shit^[2] in gym class as a kid. I would have been way better behaved. I gave gym teachers such a hard time when they were just regular people trying to do their jobs, too.

If I had known the secret was to try as hard as you can, I would have tried as hard as I could, and maybe my fellow students would have liked me more.

This new idea runs contrary to my inner oddsmaker slash accountant, who enforces a very strict effort versus reward on every possibly action, and insists that only things with a good chance of immediate, tangible rewards.

And, I hasten to add, was an ironically detached little shit even back then.

That one lesson about trying could have saved me a lot of pain and isolation.

In fact, with that one lesson plus a clue update about trying to fit in being toally worth it sometimes, and I would have had an entirely different childhood.
I will talk to you nice people again.