I got up to go to the kitchen to make my daily PB&J and such, but then I paused half way to my bedroom door.
I could feel that I would maybe need to pee real soon. So the question I had to contemplate was, do I stop what I was doing, return to my computer chair, and use the receptacle to pee, or do I press on, make lunch, then pee when I get back?
Well, by default, I finish what I am doing. For me, following through is instinct. So I kept on going to make my lunch.
This was the wrong move.
I knew what would happen yet I did it anyway. And exactly as I expected, I was fine for the first half of getting my lunch together but during the second half, the urge to pee just got stronger and stronger, and when I started to head back to the bedroom, well, the waves crashed over the seawall as the contents of my bladder sloshed up against the urinary sphincter holding them in and a little escaped.
In other words, I peed a tiny bit. Involuntarily. While still in the kitchen,
Yup. That was the wrong decision alright, and I knew it would be, but changing my mind when I paused halfway to the bedroom door would have meant jarringly interrupting myself in order to suddenly switch tracks, and I couldn’t do that.
In that limited and incredibly subjective sense, going ahead to make my lunch seemed like the lesser of two evils. It might have been a very dumb decision that I knew would end badly but at least it wasn’t disruptive.
This is seriously how I think.
Of particular note, to me at least, is how easily I convinced myself that going ahead and making lunch would be fine, that I didn’t need to pee all that bad and that I had plenty of time to make lunch and get back before the flood was due.
This was patently stupid – I mean, why even risk it? – but it seemed like the only option given my horror of sudden change.
Even when that change is vastly superior.
But so what? So I did a dumb thing. Big deal.
Nobody is smart 24/7 and a lot of my fellow geniuses throughout history have not been very good at the practical side of life.
Hence the whole “absentminded professor” schtick. I have always identified with that kind of character. I too am a brilliant person who spends far too much time lost in the wilds of his own mind to pay much attention to the here and now.
But lately, it’s occurred to me that the world inside my head would be a much happier place if I got better at that pesky “objective reality” stuff.
The two are (barely) connected, after all.
Less snarkily, this is where my whole “the world has everything I need” thing really comes into play. Part of my walling myself off from reality in favor of living in the secret garden of my mind rests on the assumption that there is nothing “out there” that is worth the time, effort, risk, pain, and fear involved in going and getting it.
What a ridiculous thought. True, depression can make it hard to even imagine hope, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any.
Being unable to feel or sense the presence or reality of something does not mean it is not there. The sun never stops shining, even at night, when we can’t see it.
And no matter how dark the night or how rough the storm, you can have total faith in the fact that you will see the sun again.
So just hang in there.
More after the break.
I’ve opened the door…
…but I haven’t gone through it yet.
No rush. Right now, I’m just enjoying the liberating feeling of fresh air on my skin after being sealed in my own god damned juices for so long.
Sorry for that image. But it’s apt.
I know that I will eventually want to go through that newly opened door and check out my surroundings. Right now, I am still all congested inside and that makes it hard to form the coherent will to actually use that exit to check out something new.
But soon I will say to hell with my ice regime and I will reach out beyond myself into the big old world out yonder and say howdy.
After all, I can be seen and be safe. There’s nothing out there I need to hide from. The feelings of exposure and danger are relics of an ancient and irrelevant past, and thus can safely be ignored.
They won’t die easy. But they’ll die nonetheless.
After all, what am I so afraid of? These fears have not been justified by evidence for more than forty years. At these point, the fears perpetuate themselves by creating the apprehension unbidden and unhinged. Comme ca :
A : Of course I’m anxious! The last time I was here, something terrible happened!
B : Really? What happened?
A : I HAD AN ANXIETY ATTACK!!
There’s nothing there. It’s all just old tapes playing in an empty room. The sooner I defy them and do what I want to do anyhow, the sooner my engine will grind up those old bad tapes and spit them out as my motor clears itself and moves on.
And I swear I’m going to do it soon. Maybe even tomorrow.
But again, no rush. It’s not something I have to do, or else.
It’s something I want to do, for me, to make myself healthier and happier and freer.
I have awe inspiring powers of the mind. Intelligence, insight, creativity, analysis, charisma, power of personality, and of course, being pretty darn cute.
I have way more than enough to make a life for myself out there in the world. And I don’t even need to go out into the big bright noisy physical world out there.
I just need to roam to new places on the Internet.
And I can do that!
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.