Pondering what I will do on the way home with the $20 I have left in the week’s budget.

Originally I was going to do White Spot or similar. I have pretty much settled on taking a taxi home on Thursdays, so Tuesday after class is the next best opportunity to treat myself to a nice meal where I can munch and blog.

But then it occurred to me that the money might be better spent at Pricesmart, getting little fun foods to make my nightly meals less monotonous. Things like those mini pot pies I like so much, or some cold cuts to encourage my eating more cheese, maybe an onion. That sort of stuff.

So now… I dunno.

I have such a problem with indecision…when the decision is about me. In theory, my high performance INTJ mind should make me highly decisive. We are optimized for rapid deep judgment. But that only applies to situations where the answer can be derived via logical analysis.

Personal decisions are more emotional and unclear. Maybe there is an objectively superior option. Maybe not. But there are so many contingent variables that it can seem hopelessly complex.

(—)
On The Road : Baby It’s Cold Outside edition

At White Spot. Guess I made my choice. I took the path of least resistance. It is a path I know all too well.

In fact, to be honest, it tends to be my path of first resort. It is the path that ends my anxiety of indecision the soonest, and that is the nature of the sort of fast rising anxiety that I suffer from : its rapid rising nature leads to panic because it makes me feel like the waters are rising and I have to get out NOW NOW NOW!! Or something terrible will happen.

The same Something Terrible that compulsions make you dread. What is it, exactly? Nobody knows….it is too terrible to contemplate!

Probably some stupid bullshit that doesn’t even matter, though.

I have been thinking about anxiety and myself a lot lately. I am coming to the conclusion that my extremely high strung, anxious nature has been my worst enemy for most of my life. When I look back at those times when someone tried to befriend me in elementary school, anxiety was there, screaming in my ear, telling me to take that path of least anxiety. And when the anxiety is social in nature, the path of least anxiety is to break off the social exposure in the way that insures the least social exposure in the future.

In other words, rejection. And as a consequence, friendlessness.

Even when I got some sort-of friends, my time with them was basically one long anxiety attack. It is weird that it took me this long to figure that out. I guess it took a lot of recovery for me to be able to clearly recognize just how strange, wrong, and worrying that is.Weird

I was a real basket case as a kid. I mean… holy SHIT.

In fact, the more I look back, the more anxiety I see. Even when I was relatively happy, the anxiety was there. The only time I came even close to being without anxiety was when I was alone. No wonder I became so solitary.

My own body chemistry was conditioning me to fear my fellow human beings.

(Hmmm. East Indian dude ahead of me eating steak. Hmmm.)

So why was I so anxious? Basic temperament has to be part of it. Even when I was a happy preschooler with friends and my mother at home, I was an excitable kid. Even back then, I pretended to be cool and calm, but I was a little bundle of energy. And definitely the sort of kid who doesn’t wander too far away from Mama.

The issue, then, is how that energy got turned into runaway anxiety. The trauma of being sexually abused probably got that started. It only takes one incident to wreck a kid, especially one as young as I was at the time.

Holy crap, sudden skit :

(SCENE : The deck of the starship 1701-D)

Riker : O’Brien, beam them up.
Picard : Belay that order!
Riker : …you mean delay, sir?
Picard : Yes of course. Why, what did I say?
Riker : You said belay, sir.
Picard : Belay? How ridiculous. That’s not even a word. Number One, I order to you inform me immediately if I should ever make a silly mistake like that again!
Riker : ………
Picard : Okay, now what?
Riker : It’s…. not the first time you’ve said it, sir.
Picard : Good God, you mean I’ve done it before? When?
Riker : As far as I can tell, Captain, you’ve said it every single time you have meant to say “delay”.
Picard : But…. but that’s impossible! Surely you must be mistaken. If I went around talking like that, people would think I was an idiot. Data, what do you have to say about this?
Data : My internal databanks show that you have made that mistake exactly 1759 times in my presence, sir. Shall I analyze the logs for more examples?
Riker : I don’t think that will be necessary, Data.
Picard : Damn it all, I still don’t believe it!
Data : We anticipated that you might react this way, sir, so we took the liberty of inviting someone you MIGHT believe.

(Turbolift doors open, Doctor Beverly Crusher enters)

Picard : Not you too, Beverly!
Crusher : Now Jean-Luc, try to calm down. Don’t make me confine you to quarters.
Picard : (visibly calms himself) I’m…. fine, Doctor Crusher. Really. Say what you have to say.
Crusher : My dear Jean-Luc… for as long as I have known you, and for as long as my late husband Jonathan knew you, you have said belay when you meant delay. Every single time.

(Pizard sinks into his command chair, deflated. )

Picard : Well then why in the blazes didn’t anyone tell me?
Riker : We thought you already knew, sir.
Crusher : After all, my scans always find you to be the picture of health. No brain abnormalities.
Picard : Brain abnormalities, oh my god…
Riker : So we thought of it as just a harmless affectation.
Picard : You meant to tell me that you thought I chose to… oh my god.
Riker : What is it, sir?
Picard : I just realized why all those Denebian delegates laughed when I apologized for the belay.

(Everybody dissolves into gales of laughter, including, eventually, Picard himself.)

Well. That was fun. I should suffer more sudden skit attacks. That one needs a little work, but I think with a little spit and polish (mostly polish), it could be a very fan-pleasing skit.

I might even forward it to Patrick Stewart himself. I think he’d get a kick out of it.

Whaddaya know, I removed some childhood trauma and a skit popped out. So that’s where they’ve been hiding!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.