I swear to Gosh, I had a really brilliant idea for an essay I was going to write tonight instead of what will be, alas, just the standard drivel. It was was cogent, it was fresh, it was something that had been riding around in my head for a long time without being expressed… in short, it was just the perfect kind of thing for me to write and feel good about writing. Piece of cake. I even had a rough outline sketched out in my head. It was going to be one sweet piece of writing. I was so stoked.

But like a million times before, I did not bother to write the idea down. I mean, an idea this great, how could I possibly forget it?

The answer is, of course, I did forget it. How? Easy. One word : summer.

There is just something about the summer that magnifies my already considerable absentmindedness and being kind of a flake in general. I go from slightly competent to practically needing a life assistant to remember to breathe. It is really quite pathetic.

And yet, it usually does not matter that much to me, because at the same time, I become more mellow and shock absorbent. This leads to me to a somewhat disturbing conclusion.

Some of my neurosis is actually functional. Being neurotic and worried and brutally self-conscious is actually how I keep myself vaguely together, and when I relax and stop being so hard on myself, everything just goes all to hell.

Clearly, this is not an acceptable situation. There must be a way of keeping my life together and remember to do things I am supposed to do without making myself miserable. That is clearly a really bad hedonic equation. Healthy people must be able to remember things without torturing themselves.

In fact, if I could depict my relationship with myself in a movie, it would be like one of those minimalist European torture flicks, with just two characters, the interrogator and his victim. I pretty much have treated myself, internally, with enormous brutality and callous inhumanity for a lot of my life. The movie would be very bloody and probably have to be released unrated.

And why not? I hate myself, so why not vent my hatred on its target? It makes a terrible kind of sense.

But of course, how can you not hate someone who treats you so brutally? When you are both torturer and victim, things get very complicated pretty fast.

Recovery, then, is about changing the nature of this relationship.

That means the torturer needs to find another way to vent his aggression, and the prisoner needs to walk out of that cell and face the world and learn to deal with it, instead of using the torturer as his excuse for hiding from the world.

And this, of course, is even harder than it sounds. Self-loathing is a hard habit to quit. It provides such instant and uncomplicated gratification of the aggressive urge. You do not need to find a target, justify it, risk retaliation or consequences, or even leave the cozy nest of your mind. You just hate on yourself and boom, instant satisfaction.

Of course, it is a very stupid thing to do. But it is like junk food. Everybody knows it is bad for you, but it provides instant gratification, so they keep on eating it anyhow.

Enough of the self-surgery though. How about an incredibly cute fox video?

I mean, isn’t he just the cutest thing ever? It is a tame fox, by the way, nothing wrong with him, just raised by people in an animal sanctuary, so he thinks he is people. Or more likely, that we are foxes. Very weird foxes.

I am so jealous of the guy holding the camera and playing with the fox. I have loved foxes all my life, and I would love to get that close to one and get to pet and play with it.

Actually, I am not sure I could handle it. It might be too much. I might get so excited I faint. I am not kidding… it is a definite possibility. I am the sort of person for whom getting too excited for my own good is a definite possibility.

I guess it is just how I am wired. Part of that overflowing, effervescent personality of mine that I slowly but surely learning to accept and let flow freely. Maybe I am just not the sort of person who is supposed to be in full control of himself all of the time. Maybe there is a lot to be said for thinking of self-control as something you apply now and then instead of constantly.

Self-control is a sometimes thing, not an all the time thing.

The problem with that is that I have to make peace with not knowing the outcome before I commit to something. Letting go of control means accepting that you do not know where all this will lead, and you cannot even guarantee that it will end well.

Maybe it will turn out that letting go of control was the stupidest thing you have ever done. I am not saying it is likely, but you cannot eliminate the possibility that one day, you will look back and say :I would have been better off staying depressed and miserable.”

But I have been thinking a lot about the idea of always trying to make the smart choice, and how that simple desire leads directly to the land of paranoia, neurosis, and self-destruction. Making stupid choices is everybody’s destiny.

Life, in fact, is a series of mistakes. That is just the way it is. Nobody has been, is, or ever will be able to live their entire lives without doing anything stupid. Even doing nothing can be stupid as hell. Think about it : if you were in the path of a speeding truck, doing nothing at all would be very stupid, would it not?

Guess I am getting tired of getting run over.