Today, I come to you from my GP’s waiting room. This is both a way to pass the time while I wait, and a fun little experiment re : his constantly late ass. The more I manage to write, the later he is.

And the place is packed, so who knows, I might finish the day’s words and a novel besides.

Not likely though. I am already getting annoyed with using the virtual keyboard. Wish I had my little Bluetooth keyboard.

I mean, this is barely 100 words, and it feels like a thousand.

As usual, I have two choices : type in landscape mode on the tablet, and have nice big buttons and only two lines of room to display what I am typing, or the other mode, where I have lots of display room and an itty bitty keyboard.

This is giving me a headache. More later.

(÷÷÷)

Went to the bathroom. I was beginning to feel a little claustrophobic with all the people around, so a little alone time was just what my current lack of doctor ordered.

Plus, you know, I had to go.

As I type this, Doc Chao is half an hour late. Sounds like a lot, but for him, that’s amateur hour.

Oops, I may have been a little bit hasty. I just got upgraded to Waiting Part 2 : The Waitening. I am in the exam room now, so… halfway there, or so.

Still pondering getting some Xmas cheer (booze), but leaning against. Alcohol and depression aren’t a great mix, not to mention alcohol and my meds, or alcohol and diabetes.

I resent that. It’s unfair that most if the world can takena little comfort from liquor, but not me. I know that a chemical form of escape is probably the opposite of what I need right now, but still. It would be nice to have a way to smooth out life’s rough edges now and then.

They’re so pointy.

The hand dryer in the bathroom is CRAZY…..

(÷÷÷)

Home now. Sorry for the interruption. The hand dryer in the doctor’s bathroom is CRAZY strong. As in, watching your flesh ripple and deform like you’re in a wind tunnel strong. The brand name was BLAST and boy did it live up to its name. I would have taken video of it if there had been a place in the bathroom where I could line up the shot… it’s insane.

And of course, being crazy strong, it’s also HELLA loud. Like a jet engine warming up crossed with the Jolly Green Giant’s cocktail blender. It is truly in the realm of trying too hard.

I can’t imagine what the sweet little old Indian lady who preceded me in the bathroom (it’s single occupant) must have thought of it. I mean, I’m a big bearish dude (with, admittedly, a lifelong sensitivity to loud noise) and it scared me. I can only imagine what it seemed like to her.

Oh, and it’s sensor-activated too, like they all are now, and so there’s that whole weird thing where you have to find the sweet spot where it goes on and stays on long enough to dry you. That’s just plain a wrong interface, if you ask me. Everybody instantly knew how to turn the thing on back when you had to press a button. There was no need for a vaguely embarrassing pantomime ritual to please the Dryer Gods.

But people are obsessed with the idea of being able to wash and dry their hands without touching anything. All the germphobes and clean freaks have driven innovation in public bathroom fixtures to the point where you will have to do that little dance twice, once for the tap then AGAIN for the dryer.

Me, I do my best to have faith in my immune system. I have been down the germ-phobic route before back in my early 20s when I had my health breakdown and became a raving hypochondriac. I was washing my hands 10 to 12 times a day, and anything that people touched a lot, like remote controls and door handles, started to feel like they were all covered in a thick greasy layer of human sweat and grime.

But I pulled myself out of that particular nosedive. I decided that if the doctor said I was healthy, I would believe him, and that if I had made it this far without catching the Black Death (and so had billions of others), my immune system was doing a fine job and I shouldn’t bother second guessing it.

Basically, I saved myself, not for the first time, via rationality. It’s a powerful tool for overcoming oneself when used properly, but you have to have faith (ha) in your own ability to arrive at the truth, and then believe it.

It’s the believing that is the hard part. I realize now that the majority of people do not have faith in their ability to derive a correct view of the world via their own faculties of reason. For the majority, their worldview is something they simply absorb and/or deduce from their own experiences.

I’m not saying there is no reason involved. But they couldn’t really tell you what they believe and why. They don’t really know. Their world-view is usually more functional than comprehensive. Big questions are useless to the running of one’s every day life, and can even be socially disadvantageous as well as leading to confusion and a sense of being lost.

So why should they go there? For them, the risks vastly outweigh the rewards. That is why, to us smarty types, they seem like they don’t think at all. They do think, but not like us, and they don’t need think like us to most of the time.

Sadly, this does make them vulnerable to those who will prey on their small picture, day to day minds by appealing to their worst natures and binding them up with fear and hate.

That’s why, for the intellectuals, while the challenge of communicating with and helping guide the average folk can be frustrating and discouraging, if the white hat intellectuals won’t do it, the black hats surely will.

Someone is going to manipulate them. We do them no favours by keeping our hands clean. They need people to shepherd them, not as overlords, but just as people who can see more of the picture and further down the road than them.

So would you rather they follow a shepherd…. or a wolf?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.