This is a big subject so I am going to uncharacteristically tackle it in parts.

One reason I am so damned cerebral was that it was via that route that I conquered my fear of the dark and otherwise overcame some of my irrational fears.

That was the first time I felt that sense of pride and triumph that comes from overcoming the darkness with the power of my mind and my will, and it was quite formative.

It’s the sort of thing that turns one into a future skeptic,. I suppose. Though I feel the same way about that label as I do about labeling myself an atheist.

And labels in general, really.

And this thing about overcoming my fear of the dark by telling myself that there was nothing there in the dark that wasn’t there in the light over and over points to a larger aspect of my overly intellectual nature and that is that for me, logic and reason and science and so on were refuges from a cruel and chaotic world.

The world outside my head might not make a lot of sense to me, especially the social aspects of it, but I could have order and reason and beliefs based on the facts inside my head and I could fit it all together in a strong but flexible framework in my mind, and that could form the structural support for me to build a shelter there.

But that came at one hell of a cost. A cost that I didn’t even know I was paying until four or five years ago but one I now regret bitterly.

Because you see, the thing about this Mister Reason con is that it passes its own tests. It’s logically consistent and resists change and does a very good impression of being actual logic and reason.

But it completely leaves out the spiritual and the world of the deeper soul. It’s entirely ignorant of the needs of the spirit and the joys of being an embodied being and the world of sensual pleasure.

And it sure as fuck doesn’t know how to have fun, or to make itself happy at all.

It’s an incredibly narrow view of the world that feels like being broad and deep of mind because it covers such enormous areas of knowledge and understanding.

But that’s all it covers. Knowledge and understanding. Cold facts and deductions. Rules and applications. Systems and mechanisms.

All very power and all completely useless when it comes to being and feeling alive.

Because I am not, as it turns out, a robot. Neither am I an angel, a saint, or a holy man. I am a humble human being and that means it is beyond futile for me to pretend that I can completely hide from the loud and scary world in my lofty ideals and Olympian detachment forever and ever, amen.

I’m here. I’m real. This is now. This is the real world, warts and all. And being violently averse to it in favour of my cerebrations does me no favours because despite what my deceitful powers of reason tries to tell me, the real world is where I will be living the rest of my time on earth so I might as well get used to it already.

If you don’t endure, you won’t adapt.

Must resist the urge to flee.

More after the break.

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The story so far…

1. A&W. Because I got-za to have the Mozza. Nope, payment rejected. I checked and the card shows no errors. And I have ordered A&W with a PayPower card before. So I have no idea WTF. OK, then I’ll try…
2. Burger King. That grilled taste. Nope, closed. Before 8:30 pm. What, do the employees and managers all have an early bedtime? Where I come from, BK is the go-to fast food for when you are drunk/stoned and hungry at 3 am. (In our defense, we didn’t have a Denny’s. )
3. Denny’s. Also closed. WTF? My first thought when it said they were closed was “like hell they are!” but then I realized I always go to Denny’s on Sunday so maybe they close earlier on week days. Apparently, our Denny’s is not one of the 24 hour ones. Or some serious bugfuckery is going on.
4. McD’s. Payment also rejected. This is beginning to feel personal. This lil card of mine already paid for my groceries for this week dammit!
5. Last try : 711? Nope, Hungryman sub has vanished from this reality. Ordered one just last week. Now there is no mention of it or any other of 7-11’s fine selection of subs on DoorDash. That would be very mysterious to me if I cared. Maybe the lettuce shortage fucked things up in production?

Fuck it. I give up. White flag. I will just eat my bologna and cheese melted onto some Ritz crackers in the microwave in peace and trouble you no more.

For now. Because I am still pretty pissed off. My tummy and I were disappointed five freaking times and patient readers know I do not handle disappointment well.

I mean, it is hard enough for me to make up my mind once, for Dog’s sake.

Addendum : when I typed “sub” into the search bar for 7-11 on DoorDash, 23 different products came up, NONE OF WHICH WERE SUBS.

I mean, that’s downright Kafka-esque.

Oh well, at least I didn’t end up spending the $20-$30 ordering in usually costs me.

I have this theory that restaurants have figured out that people are less fussy about price when they are ordering in, and have jacked up the prices on their delivery menus well above what you would pay in person.

Next time I’m at Denny’s I will have to pull up their DoorDash site and see if the prices on DoorDash are the same as the ones on the menu.

This is the kind of pulse-pounding two-fisted investigative journalism you’ve come to expect in this extremely au courant blog.

And hey…. you’re welcome.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.