I’ve been trying to learn to be more impulsive but it’s rough.
My inherent Taurus caution is going to fight me the whole way.
Note that I am seeking to be more impulsive, not impulsive full stop. I will never be an impulsive person. That’s way too big a stretch.
No, I just want to open myself up to my impulses more so that I can sometimes act on them and thus reinforce and strengthen them.
Impulses, it turns out, need to be fed in order for them to stay healthy. And the only way to feed them is to act on them immediately instead of making them wait for the conscious mind to carefully weigh the options.
If you always do that, the impulses die and with them the main spark plug for your whole motivational engine. You lose your esprit, your life force, your vim and vigor.
I recognize the truth of all of this. You don’t have to be Freud to realize that a balance between id and ego must be maintained by the superego and that an imbalance in either direction is a recipe for neurosis.
But knowing something is true and truly believing it are radically different things. Knowing I need to relax and be more flexible and open to impulsive action does not, in itself, make it happen.
And trying to change my deeply ingrained habits of thought can often feel like I am trying to bend steel with my bare hands.
And I’m no Superman.
If I’m to become more impulsive, I’m going to have to alter my relationship with regret.
Take my recent impulsive acquisition of a game called A Plague’s Tale : Requiem.
I got it on impulse purely based on the text description of it and the fact that I knew the game had a lot of passionate fans and was a critical darling.
This was an objectively stupid way to spend nearly of my carefully saved up Salad money. I really should have dug deeper to find out what the game is actually like.
Because I hate the fucking thing.
I’ve played enough of it now to know that what I thought (hoped) was just a tutorial was, in fact, the game, and all I could expect was more of the same slow, plodding, walking simulator gameplay punctuated by brutally unforgiving action sequences based largely around stealth, at which I suck.
It says a lot about me that when my character finally gets her sling back and I could actually kill (or knock out) enemies, I suddenly started progressing WAY faster.
I am good at combat. But stealth eludes me. I’m just not patient enough to do things slowly and silently in the shadows, nor am I observant enough.
So now I am stuck with a game I can’t stand and that cost like six months’ worth of Salad earnings and I can’t help but deeply regret my impulsivity.
Presumably, people who are actually impulsive don’t regret things for very long. They shrug, chalk it up to experience, and just keep going without giving it another thought.
And maybe they are a little wiser in the future, and maybe not. But I envy their ability to maintain their forward momentum regardless.
Me, I know I will be obsessing over this errant purchase for days on end, berating myself and hating myself and wishing I could go back and choose better this time.
Futile, I know. The past is fixed. You can’t change it. Once it happens, it happened.
Maybe if I had more money, I could afford to be more impulsive.
But for now, I just have regret.
More after the break.
What’s going on with me
Well let’s see.
Did Wound Care this afternoon. Yes, you read that right, the AFTERNOON. The appointment was at 2:30 pm, which would have been impossible to make if Joe was working but as is, it made for a nice change of pace.
At Wound Care, the nurse and I discovered that the wound on my right foot is actually healing up nicely and (fingers crossed) might actually be on its way out.
That would be nice.
The foot itself is looking pink and healthy too. Presumably the circulation in that foot has improved. Before it was looking kind of clammy and… ashen.
But now, IT LIVES!
This was also a callous paring day. Linda, the Wound Care Clinician, visited me once again to “debride” my wounds and clear things up in general.
So she abraded the callous buildup away with her neat little “sharp ball on a stick” tool. This means that right now I have a slight burning sensation in the soles of my feet where the debridement was done because that’s what it feels like when those areas start to heal and, presumably, starts rebuilding the dang callous.
It’s a cycle.
Tomorrow, Julian and I must make a pilgrimage back to that orthotics place in Vancouver for… a reason.
Honestly, it’s been so long since the previous appointment, where they took casts of my feet, that I have no idea what this second appointment is for.
Hopefully they will just hand me the new shoes. But I am not sure. I think the nice British lady who did the casting said something about a follow up appointment. But she also said she thought I’d have my shoes before Xmas. So I dunno.
So it will be a journey into mystery!
I am not looking forward to it. I had completely forgotten about the appointment until I happened to check my email today and there was a reminder there.
And thank God for that because otherwise we would not have shown up and I would have another “absence due to absence of mind” on my record.
I can be such an airhead! I am living proof that you can be brilliant and clueless at the same time. I wish I was the sort of person who had followers or an assistant so they could keep me on track and organized.
That way I could concentrate on thinking the big thoughts.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.