Brainwave : I should get a cute lizard plushie I can attach to my computer screen and have him be my monitor lizard!

Anyhow, no new monitor yet. And I am beginning to have doubts about my choice.

I suppose it was inevitable that my feverish mind would eventually come up with a rationally plausible reason to give me paroxysms of self-doubt and regret.

In this case, it revolves on whether I made the right choice in choosing a compromise between resolution and refresh rate or whether I should have gone all the way with 4K resolution and to hell with the refresh rate.

Maelkoth says he can’t tell the difference between 60 hz refresh rate and 120. But all the people on the internet who answered the question, “which is more important for gaming, refresh rate or resolution?” said refresh rate was more important.

Supposedly, high refresh rates prevent blurring when making quick turns in 3D first person environments. And I do play a lot of 3D first person open world games.

But it’s more important to me that things look good. I want high detail graphics that are pleasing to the eye as well as realistic-ish.

Realistic like a good photograph, not like…. um, reality.

After saying his bit about refresh rate, I think Maelkoth sensed he was causing me doubt and said “But I am sure whatever you get will be lovely. ”

He’s known me long enough to get a sense of how high strung I am.

Yup. That’s me. High strung. Overwrought. Emotional.

Hysterical in more than one sense of the word.

I keep repeating these things to myself because it’s a new realization that it hard for me to get used to so it requires reinforcement.

But it is unquestionably true. I’ve always been highly emotional.

And I’ve almost always been in denial about it.

I guess I liked the idea that I was this cool calm rational chess player type who could always choose the best moves in life with flawless logic and sound reasoning.

Which is clearly not true. Like I have said before, I often end up making impulsive emotional decisions when there are too many variables to compute rationally.

And there almost always is.

At least, there is when you have a creative genius’ mind that can always see way more possibilities than most people like I do.

And I think that my depression exploits and exaggerates this tendency toward rational indecision leading to option paralysis in order to keep me in stasis, where it wants me.

Remember, the basic ruleset of my depression is MOTION IS DANGER AND DANGER IS DEATH ERGO MOTION IS DEATH.

Ergo don’t fuckin’ move.

It helps to imagine it as being like I am a scared little animal hiding from a predator, holding incredibly still, its own breath sounding incredibly loud to it, scared out of its tiny little mind by imminent, horrible death.

Except there is no predator. The wolves left the door and got Burger King instead a very long time ago. The only predators left are the version of them I carry in my head.

And so what if they catch me? What can they do? They’re just a bunch of sock puppets for my goddamned depression. They have no real power over me.

They’re just a game I play to scare myself and I can stop any time I want. All I have to do is refuse to be scared of them any more and their bluff is called and they fall apart.

Yes, just like in a million children’s cartoon episodes.

Turns out they knew what they were talking about. Go figure.

More after the break.

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Quest for lasagna

No, that’s not the title of a new Garfield MMORPG.

Here’s how it went down.

I was pondering what I wanted to order when I remembered how I wanted lasagna last week but Pizza Hut didn’t have it.

And for a moment I was a little sad.

But then I remembered that I order through Skip the Dishes, and they have a search function on their website, and I could just type “lasagna” into it and it would show me all the restaurants that had lasagna on their menus.

So that’s what I did. And let me tell you, it gave me a heady feeling of power ro see all those restaurants that served lasagna displayed before me and getting to choose which one got my business.

First place I tried rejected my credit card. Oh no!

Second place I tried my clue finally arrived and I realized I hadn’t updated which credit card Skip was using and that’s why my payment failed.

D’oh! Oh well, I corrected my error and now I have glorious pasta to eat.

For the record, the restaurant is called Romilano Pizza, and this lasagna is pretty damned good. Very hearty and meaty, which is what I was looking for.

Speaking of looking for things, my new monitor has arrived safely. But I have yet to get it out of the box because I am determined to clean my desk off first and it is, unsurprisingly, quite the job.

But to keep this from becoming a gumption trap^[1], I have made a deal with myself that no matter what, the thing is coming out of the box by 2 pm tomorrow.

I have cleared off around 50 percent of my desk, although that area still needs a deep cleaning before I declare it clean.

I dunno why I put off cleaning for so long. Treating it like some dreaded thing I can’t possibly do right so it’s better not to do it at all.

I think it’s more that I fear taking responsibility for my own life. So I just let everything slide so I can stay all turtled up inside.

Sad but true.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.