Don’r worry, that’s not a double negative. I haven’t taken leave of my senses or my grammar.
However, in order to explain why that is and why this is such an important statement to make in my life right now, I am goinh to have to go back to the beginning, which in this case is therapy.
I know, here I am talking about therapy on a Friday. Quelle shocke. But today’s session was special. The doc helped to a really profound revelation, and I just have to memorialize it here in order to help it really sink in.
It started out with me making a remark that I need to forgive myself if I end up doing nothing all afternoon.
My therapist pointed out that even calling it “doing nothing” was attaching a negative label to it.
And at first I didn’t get it. it didn’t click.
Here’s me : *poit poit* Well, technically, I guess….
But after a few more times around the mulberry bush (did I mention my therapist is a weasel?), the penny dropped and I got it. I really got it. And the it I got was a really great it. In fact, I think it is one of the best its I gotten this decade.
Because I’m an it-getting. No really, I am!
Alright, enough soft shoe shuffle. What I realized is that he was absolutely right. To say I did nothing is factually inaccurate. I didn’t do nothing, I did a bunch of things. I played video games. I listened to podcasts. I read. I fed my mind. And most importantly, I thought about stuff, and that is one of the most important things I do.
In the grand computer of life, I am a processor. A thinker. And I am not ashamed to say that I have gotten really, really good at it over the years. This constant processing of input is the source of my creativity, my insights, my ideas, and my depth of mind and personality.
Just by being alive and awake, I am doing something. I am processing. I am thinking. I am distilling understanding from the bumper crop of information that this age provides. That’s a long way from nothing.
The outdated diseased part of my mind says “Well yes, but you did nothing productive. ”
Well who the fuck says I have to be productive? Why isn’t it okay for me to just be me? Who is the overlord demanding I produce like a factory hen? Society? Well then fuck society.
Fuck society, fuck pressure, fuck self-judgment, fuck the whole goddamned system. (Imagine that in a Jack Nicholson voice. )
Fuck everything that stands between me and the true glory that I deserve. It all has to go. I am ripping out piping, knocking down walls, and dumping dumpsters full of detritus down the drain. I don’t give a shit about having something to replace it with. Whatever function it performed, it did badly anyhow.
And I am confident that, if the function it performed is important, I will grow a new, clean, optimized system in its place, and everything will be better off in the long run.
There is truth to the idea that you have to destroy the old to make way for the new. I have always resisted that idea, as I am by nature a conservative person and that idea always seemed just like an excuse for barbarity and chaos to me.
But it is absolutely true. Sometimes, you have to throw out everything and start over. Even the oldest forest can benefit from the occasional forest fire. And I am so ready to destroy all the bad machinery in my head. I am through with slow reform and I am ready for rapid reset.
The machine is broken beyond repair. All you can do now is dispose of it and start from scratch again. Take what we have learned from the flaws of the old machine, and build a shiny new machine without them.
Or maybe that is just my crazy creative brain talking. I have been reading this interesting article about the kind of mental malfunction that leads both to creativity and insanity.
Turns out there is this structure in the brain (yay brain science!) called the precuneus.
The precuneus is the area of the brain that shows the highest levels of activation during times of rest and has been linked to self-consciousness and memory retrieval. It is an indicator of how much one ruminates or ponders oneself and one’s experiences.
In normal people, this brain bit is only active when they are completely at rest. But for us crazy creative types, that fucker is on all the goddamned time.
Holy shit, the constant blaring radio of my thoughts has a name, and that name is precuneus. I have lived with it for it so long that it took the article to remind me that it is there.
And a lot of us brainy types have wished we could turn our brain off for just five fucking minutes sometimes. Especially when trying to sleep. It is not hard to imagine how this unending cycle of contemplative thought could result in a very tired and depleted brain, which in turn would lead to depression.
It would also fit neatly into my idea that people seek out ways to press the reset button on their brains. Whether you are a Tibetan monk trying to achieve nirvana or drinking a fifth of Jack while listening to Nirvana, you are seeking the annihilation of consciousness that comes from, for example, ECT.
Press reset on the brain, and that prenuceus shuts the hell up for a while, and your head is no longer a massive echo chamber for its constant emanations.
To be honest, I would really like to know what that is like. But I am pretty sure there is no such thing as elective ECT. You can’t just pop into your friendly neighborhood ECT booth and get your brain rebooted on a coffee break.
More’s the pity.
Well that’s it from me for today, my faithful readers. I don’t know what I will do next. Maybe I will flop down and play with my tablet. Maybe I will go watch some TV. Maybe I will hit my head against the wall exactly 187 times.
But whatever I do, I know one thing :
It won’t be nothing.
See you tomorrow, folks!