Namely. what do I want for my birthday?
And as usual, I have no fucking clue
I mean, talk about option paralysis. There are far too many possibilities to calculate. And as patient readers know, my weak and palsied id is far too ineffectual to be able to tell me what I want.
I’m not good at wanting things.
I’m good at making do with whatever I end up with. Which can be an impressive skill in and of itself, but pretty useless in situations like this.
So I guess it’s time to try to write my way towards some kind of answer.
For my own edification only, of course. So I know what to buy myself. Patient readers also know that I have given up on expecting the people in my life to pay any attention whatsoever to any wish list of mine.
Because I mean, first they would have to actually read the list, then they’d have to think about which thing on the list to get me, then they would have to think about where to get that thing, then they would have to shop online for that thing, and then they would have to order that thing in time for my birthday, and then wait for it, and so forth and so on, and quite frankly my happiness is simply not worth that kind of effort.
I mean, It’s not even close.
Not that I’m bitter.
Anyhow, on to the speculation. Part of the problem is that my main hobby, video games, does not require a lot of material items to pursue.
And the things that might actually contribute to that hobby, like a new beefy power supply for my computer, are way too expensive to ask for.
I guess I could just ask for Amazon gift cards, to be used towards said goal.
The clock is ticking. My birthday is the 19th and that’s a week from tomorrow, Sunday. Which is rather handy because it means my birthday is on a day when we’d be going to Denny’s anyhow, so my “party” is already in the bag, so to speak
I put “party” in quotes because we’re all too old and tired to actually throw a real party, with cake and ice cream and so on.
I know I can’t ask for Steam gift cards because my friends can’t find those. It’s only the most popular gaming platform in the world, dwarfing all others, but that doesn’t mean anyone around here sells their cards.
Of course, there’s always virtual gift certificates, but then you would have to like, take out your credit card, and type in the numbers, and then do a search, and then go through the whole checkout process, and phew, yeah, totally not worth it.
I mean, then it would become a whole “thing” and we all know how impossible it is to do anything that is a “thing”.
Not that I’m bitter.
So yeah. Amazon gift cards are an acceptable compromise between me being able to get what I want and my distinct distaste for cash as a gift.
It’s just so impersonal! It has zero value as a gesture. It replaces, “I got you this because I know you will like it” with “I have no idea what you want or even who you are as a person, but um…. whatever it is, you can probably get it with money. ”
Thank God I am not bitter about all this.
Amazon gift cards will do nicely, at least as a way to fill in the blank until I think of something more specific I want.
You know. To buy for myself.
More after the break.
More crisis management
On the whole, I am probably better off not feeling as though I’m in crisis.
I mean sure, an argumen could be made for the crisis POV. After all, I am about to turn 51 and I haven’t even start my life yet. I am still stuck in Failure to Launch Mode (FTLM) after all 30 years of my adult life and if I am going to get some living done I should probably start doing it real soon now, while I still can.
But let’s peel back another layer of that onion, because having cause to panic does not necessarily mean it’s a good idea to panic.
I detailed this once before in this space, a long time and thousands of words ago : the panic mode does not galvanize me into action. Quite the opposite, in fact : it just makes me disengage and withdraw all the more because it makes life even more stressful and my malformed response to stress is to hide in my shell until it goes away.
Except it never goes away.
So arguably, I would be far better off going in the opposite direction and treating life like it’s easy, rewarding, and fun. Just one long lovely vacation where I am free to do whatever pleases me the most at any given moment and where all of life’s possibilities lie open to me to indulge in whenever I please, like a smorgasbord of self-actualization.
If I could get into that groove, all the stress would go away and with it a great deal of my inner conflict. And I would just plain be treating myself better. Gone would be an inner world with all the relaxed calm of a hostage situation where I am always being crushed in the jaws of my own brutal self-judgment and don’t get to be happy until I overcome myself in a way I know will never happen.
Why not, you ask?
Because my inner world is too damned toxic! Catch-22.
So I need to pull my head out of my assumptions and strive to change my perspective on life entirely. It really is all about how you look at things, and that CAN change.
But it won’t be easy. The old POV has inertia on its side. It will require a lot of self-correction and concentrated, long term effort.
But I just have to keep it up until I truly start to feel the difference.
Then the process will provide its own motivation.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.