Spoon Shortage Baffles Authorities

Well that didn’t work. It was supposed to be able to insert it inline!

Well let’s try it like this  then :

INT. NEWSROOM

NEWSCASTER
Local authorities are baffled by
the sudden disappearance of over
five thousand spoons from the local
area last night. We caught up to a
clearly distraught Mayor Tommy
Dougie Daniels to get his reaction
to this shocking crime wave.

INT. HALLWAY, LEGISLATIVE BUILDING

The camera is following a portly man in a Sears business
suit, who is lightly jogging down the hallway.

OFFSCREEN VOICE
Mister Mayor! What can you tell us
about this shocking violation of
the public’s trust?

The MAYOR pauses, confused.

MAYOR DANIELS
You’ll have to be more specific.

A few moments of pregnant silence.

MAYOR DANIELS
Oh! You mean the spoons thing!

OFFSCREEN VOICE
Of course! Why, what did you…

The mayor resumes jogging

MAYOR DANIELS
(rattling it off rapidly)
I just want to go on record as
saying that we are doing everything
possible to find the perpetrators
of this heinous crime and, most
importantly. get back our spoons!

OFFSCREEN VOICE
I see. Tell me, Mister Mayor…
does the spoon shortage mean we
will have to cancel next weekend’s
International Soup Festival?

The Mayor once more stops, and this time, he looks directly
into the camera with a very serious look on his face.

MAYOR DANIELS
Listen. I want to make this
perfectly clear. This weekend’s
Festival is on no matter what.

OFFSCREEN VOICE
But when reached for comment, the
festival’s organizers said :

INT. SMALL BUSINESS OFFICE

FESTIVAL ORGANIZER
I’m sorry, Mayor. But we just don’t
have the spoons for that.

 

Hmmm. Still not right, but it will do. Click the PDF if you want the properly formatted version, if not, then… don’t.

Anyhow. obviously spoon theory has been on my mind ever since I brought it up in last night’s blog entry. It’s something I have known about for a long long time, but for some reason, it wasn’t until mentioning it last night then letting ti sit in my consciousness over night that it suddenly dawned on me that it’s the solution I have been looking for all my life without knowing it.

For my whole life, and especially adult life, I have been trying to find a way to express what I can’t do things which seem easy and obvious and totally helpful. I have felt very vulnerable and helpless because of this total inability to justify or explain myself.

SImply saying “because depression” isn’t enough, and not just because it’s bad grammar. ^[1] I needed a more specific way to explain to people why someone like me, who doesn’t necessarily come across as having issues, can’t do things.

Those who know me know I am somewhat of a hot mess, but people who are not that familiar with me see a very intelligent, well-spoken, self -possessed, confident (ha!)  individual who seems to have, if anything, fewer problems than most.

This contrasts wildly with the truth of my interior life, where I have trouble getting together the spoons to do damn near anything that does not consist of my usual regimen of video games and meals and blogging.

Even the social times I enjoy with my friends on a regular basis require a significant act of will to overcome the voice in my head that views the oncoming socialization as a violent attack by people who want to tear me away from my nice safe hole and make me go out there where I will be exposed.

Let’s call that goddamned voice the Rock Crab, who wants to stay under his rock and doesn’t listen to or care about anything else.

I see I have veered off topic. Back to spoons.

Spoon theory, and specifically the ability to say “I can’t do that because I am all out of spoons” or, like the organizer, “I don’t have the spoons for that”, is the key I have been looking forsince I was a kid

And not just for that specific languageeither, but for the whole world of expressing one’s lack of interior resources it opens up.

It even lets me explain why I can’t do sudden things. Why if someone showed up and said “You want to hang out right now?” I would have no choice but to say no, even if I know I would enjoy it and really wish I could say yes.

But I don’t have the spoons for it. In order to be able to leave my teeny tiny comfort zone, I need lots of time in which to save up the requisite number of spoons. I also need that time in order to go through the many attacks of Rock Crab emotions I will go through before I actually do the thing.

It takes many spoons to defeat the Rock Crab. And if I don’t have those spoons, there is nothing I can do. The Rock Crab wins, and I stay in my hole, hating myself.

Now, looking at my psyche as a system (how INTJ of me), it’s clear that the real problem is that spoon generation is far too slow to meet demand. Both total spoon capacity and spoon production need to be increased until a satisfactory level of social capabilities are available to me.

But I do not know how that is done. Presumably some of my very deep social injuries need to heal properly before I can regain the confidence necessary for the needed boost in spoon manufacture.

It’s really fun for me to talk about spoons this way. Just so you know.

I deeply wish that I could be the person I sometimes seem to be. Smart, confident, funny, charming, and a heck of a nice guy to boot.

But until this black hole inside my soul disappears, I will continue to need to use most of my spoons as fuel just to keep from being annihilated.

And that has to come before absolutely everything else.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.