I recently rediscovered this manic gem of a song :

I adore this song to death. I love how silly it is, and how infectious it is, and how over the top it is. I even love that bizarre noise that sounds like a cartoon pig from a British children’s show being anally violated with a garden hose.

We-weel, we-weel, we-weel indeed, Mister Pig.

But what I love most about the song is the near-psychotic level of cheerfulness. It’s so upbeat and peppy that it makes me feel like I am about to go full manic. It sounds like the prelude to a very colorful murder spree, and I love that.

Because I’m a sick son of a bitch. But you already knew that.

When I hear that nutty little song, I get this urge to dance around like a demented child on crack with a huge grin on my face and high-stepping it like I am in the world’s fanciest and most ridiculous circus marching band.

It cheers me up, and that’s a precious thing in a life like mine.

Had therapy today. Doc Costin had oral surgery recently, and it wound up going into overtime. Ended up being far bigger a deal than previously thought.

Been there. When I was a kid, they put me under the knife to remove an abscess from my gums and found a tooth growing upside down, sideways, and backward underneath, and so a one hour surgery turned into three.

The end result was that Doctor Costin did not do much talking today.

Dang. I really missed his interrupting me to go off on some random tangent when I am trying to express a deep, intimate, and complex emotion to him.

Told him about the eye surgery, natch. Mentioned how I didn’t like the icy cold feeling the Ativan gave me, but it sure kept me calm.

I have a few of those kicking around here somewhere from when Doc Costin gave me a few to try. So it’s nice to know that they can get the job done.

Might come in handy if I ever escape this little rat cage of mine and go out into the big bad world and need something to keep my social anxiety dogs from barking.

Sure would be nice to experience the world without being in a constant low grade panic attack every moment I am out of the apartment.

It amazes me to look back at my life and realize how much of it I spent panicking. Pretty much all my time at both Kwantlen and VFS was spent freaking out.

I just didn’t realize it because for me, that was normal. That’s how I always felt around people. Even my own family.

It took gaining a lot of perspective for me to realize that no, that is not in fact normal. Most people are not terrified all the time, Some even can be relaxed and happy in a social setting, even around people they don’t know.

And all that anxiety contributed mightily to my social awkwardness because it’s hard to be smooth and friendly and open to others when your bloodstream is full of fear adrenaline that is screaming at you to fight, flee, or hide.

Thing is, I pretend to be fine. I put on a show that is more for me than the audience. Like I am trying to fool myself into being calm.

But what choice do I have? Letting my anxiety show would attract attention and then everyone would know what a freaked out freak I am.

So I smile.

More after the break.

Are you plastic?

I’m really getting into this guy’s stuff, despite his… um, less that natural delivery.

The meat of the vid is that there is a psychologist named Carol Dueck who speaks of a fixed versus a growth mindset.

A fixed mindset views itself as absolutely predetermined. You are good at X and bad at Y and you like A and hate B and you have this temperament and that personality and all of these things are as immutable and unchanging as your adult height and eye color.

This is bad.

Because it precludes, as Dueck points out, any possibility of growth. It states that you are all that you will ever be, and while there might be a certain comforting certainty about that, it is life-denying in the extreme.

And I have definitely been guilty of it for my entire life. Going back to Grade One, where I had a very hard time with arts and crafts due to being so uncoordinated and never having had someone to play with me in the right way in my formative years.

So I concluded that I was “bad” at arts and crafts, and largely refused to even try to do them from that point on.

And I got away with it because nobody wants to be the one to say “We’re holding this genius child back a grade because he can’t cut a proper paper doll”.

Never did it occur to me to keep trying till I got it right. I was spoiled by my precocious IQ. So many things came so easily to me that I never learned to overcome my limitations and that left me dangerously undisciplined, unfocused, and timid.

And it set me on the path of instantly giving up when things do not just come to me naturally, and that tendency has cost me one hell of a lot.

“Comes to me as naturally as breathing” is a heck of a high standard for acceptable new activities. It’s a very limiting attitude.

Even when you have frankly astounding natural abilities like I do. I could make a career out of doing things I find trivially easy, but in order to get there, I would have to do a lot of things I find very difficult.

And that means growing the fuck up.

The sad truth is that I know that on some level, I am waiting for some kind of magical opportunity where everything I want falls into my lap without my ever having to do anything scary or hard or just plain not fun.

Well it ain’t gonna happen. Staying a weak willed child has cost me too much. Remaining trapped in this pupal stage is no longer an option.

Staying within my comfort zone is killing me. So it’s time to throw that option right out the fucking door.

From now on, I am searching for a rocky path I can live with.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Oh, PS, forgot the all important affirmations.

I am not all that I can ever be.

I can become more than I am right now. I can grow, I can change, I can adapt.

My idea of myself and my limitations is just a rough guess. Because the truth is, I don’t know all that I am capable of.

And limits are there to be exceeded.

I am NOT limited to the person I think I am.

I can be so much more.

There, that oughta do it.