Pleased with oneself

This is what it takes for Catie (C.E. Murphy, world-famous author and graphic novelist) to be pleased with herself.  I feel, in her shoes, I would be pleased as well.  And my feet would hurt, ’cause, well, big feet compared to Catie’s.

I suspect I don’t need that intensity of accomplishment to be pleased…and, with the recurring fecal storms that eat my brain, I think it might be productive for me to find out — if not where the line of please/displeased is exactly — what zipcode it has on its mailing address.

‘Course, the yardstick might be different from day to day, but that doesn’t make the question without merit.

Crossposted from Epinephrine & Sophistry

Tolerance

I was nurtured in a tolerant, accepting environment.  One didn’t, for instance, point a finger and say that this person or that was horrid, ugly, unpleasant, foul, evil, or wrong.  Instead, it would be noted that “I think…” or “I feel…”, with the implication that there are other ways to think and feel without the expressed or implied indication that some of those ways to think and feel are utterly stupid and destructive.

The result, over the years, has been that even if someone takes advantage of a soft spot in my head for years, using me as a tool and intentionally hurting me so that they can feel better, I was still very reluctant to say “that was wrong.”

In fact, the only person that I express explicit judgement on is me.  I am wrong, I am destructive, I am a burden, I am slow, stupid, ugly, or the wrong shade of puce.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last Call

Here we go.  The usual fluffy stuff, lust-ridden entendre, and (everyone’s favorite) navel gazing.  Gazing, hell — I examine my navel intensely, learn its habits and stalk it until, triumphantly carrying its carcass over my shoulders and returning to this, our little etheric village, I can lay it out for all to have their part, providing for us all.

(Okay, here’s where I reel myself in and, teeth set to exhibit my exerted will, entirely stop myself from going off on some tangent about an entire aboriginal culture who hunted and lived on the thundering herds of navel.  All parts of the belly button would go to use in this culture.  The umbilical scar would not merely be prey, but treasured cohabitants of the high plains.  Meat, of course, and leather, would be had from them, but warmth, too, in the form of harvested and dried lint, and even the hairs from the more unruly could be woven into useful — I said I wasn’t going to do this.)

Here’s what I found in my navel today.  

Death, pouring beers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Formulae

It’s fair to say that I’ve spent about 25 years sorting out not what is important, but how to tell what is important…and then sorting out whether what is important really ought to be, and what to do about it if it oughtn’t be so important.

Frighteningly, I have most of that sorted out.  Why is that frightening?  Because it’s been taking up most of my time and energy, and with that off my plate (or at least off to one side of my plate) there’s time and energy to deal with other things.

This has been a sort of shadowy feeling in the back of things for me, but yesterday it moved to sharp relief.  I was concerned about my reasons for writing.  Not the writing itself, not how to do it or when I would find time.  I was concerned that perhaps my reasons for writing at all were pathological and should be treated in therapy by a strong willed professional armed with whip, chair, and thorazine.  See, I get a rush when I receive a acceptance letter, and another when my work is suddenly out there for everyone to read.

Okay, stop laughing.  My concern was that I was basing my self-regard on the basis of the value others placed on me; ie I was worthwhile because someone would publish my work.  Sure, that motivation would move me right along, but it was faulty in premise and would all end in tears.  I was paralysed with doubt; could I, in all conscience, continue to write when I was feeding this horrible breakage in my psyche?

Shannon pointed out, at this stage (fifteen minutes or so into my thought process) that I had been writing for years without publication or payment.  ”Oh, that’s all right, then,” I said, and finished my first draft of Wet Footprints.

Clearly, things are much more self-evident in my head these days; short months ago I would have agonized for days before I said anything, and then would have held severe reservations on the findings of impartial consultants.

So.  (There’s always a “so”, with me; every thought has its resultant action, otherwise what’s the point of thinking?)

So.  Since things are clear, I worked out a Map To Success, have formulated several concrete steps to take along various paths, and have realized that  I am (finally) approaching a point where I can make plans and have reasonable expectation that I won’t let the ducks nibble the footings out from under them.  So I have (a year after my mentor suggested I do so) downloaded Consistency, and have set it up for use.  Go me.

My Map To Writing Success:

I want to write stories, publish them, and be paid so that I can write more stories more of the time, because I love telling stories and entertaining people (and, yes, holding their attention); therefore, I will write as much as I can sustainably until I am writing daily and submit what I write for publication.  My passion is what makes people tick — I spend silly amounts of time thinking about that — and being whimsical.  Those can only add depth to my writing.

Crossposted from Epinephrine & Sophistry

Goals

Goals are lovely things.  Short term, long term, those hard-to-grasp midterm goals, they’re useful and give you a sense of accomplishment when you’ve set them.

I’ve a few goals.  Write novels for publication, write short stories for publication, live in a house, have my finances clean enough that I don’t need to think about them any more, get our debts ordered (an odd thought; do they ever run short of debt and have to order more?), get enough sleep for as a habit instead of an anamoly….  I find that I’ve listed my goals in what I have come to consider Long term to Short term order.  The last goals listed are making such a ruckus in my life (or, in the case of sleep, such a drain of emotional energy and mental capability) that I can’t pursue the othes well.

Since the others are the ones that are important to me, that’s making me sort of fussy.  I spend my days fiddling around with the UNIMPORTANT goals, like getting enough sleep or getting out of collections, when there are LIFE CHANGING IMPORTANT goals out there to work toward, like writing a short story that will sell for a few dollars.

I used to think that, since the short term goals were immediate (and thereby more urgent),  the implication was that my long term goals were not important.  Not so, I now realize.  The short term goals are almost not goals at all.

My long term goals are Things To Achieve or Lifestyle To Live.  My short term goals … very much resemble a list of Obstacles To Overcome.

So…perhaps my fussiness comes from having my eye on goals of achievment and existance, but my daily life is centered on slaloming through life’s pot-holes, not attaining anything or existing in a perfect fashion at all.

No WONDER I’m fussy.

Today I will go buy me something classy, like this, and use it daily.  I’ll set it for 15 minutes (number picked from the air — they float all around me these days, like pollen or gnats, but quantifiable) each evening and write during that time as the cat spins ’round; emails, journal entries, notes of bathroom wall scribbling, short stories, novels — writing.  I don’t care what kind, at this point.  It will be a daily exercise, no matter the state of my brain-death, in Attaining instead of Dodging.

So.  A short term goal that is positive.  Good on me, I feel.

Crossposted from Epinephrine & Sophistry

We’re all addicts

How profound is that? I mean, you read that and you think you’re right on the verge of a Beat welling of thought and drug-maddened prose that will enlighten you on the human condition while obfuscating — well, everything. The Beats were like that.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk to you about today.

There’s something wobbling about in my head, and I can’t quite find it. So, as is my habit (and a fine habit it is — not a habit, though — it doesn’t tie in with the addiction thing), I’ll use all of your foreheads as my sounding boards. I’ll hear my voice echo off your faces, some bemused, some bewildered, many impassive and reaching for the next hyperlink, and the returning sound will show me the shape of my surroundings; a kind of philisophic sonar that only 43 years of evolution can produce. Nature’s miracle, that’s me.

I’m the fruit-eating sort, though. Get someone else to keep the moth population down.

Rambling. Right.

Addiction. The addict stands, near collapse in a dirty public restroom or a back alley, a spike in his arm, his eyes turned upward toward the grace of white powder and glazing over from that blessing. We can all sneer, if we like, or turn uncomfortably away and hurry home to warmth and safety, to places filled with people who aren’t doing that to their lives — using them up so quickly and for so little.

Except, y’know, we can’t. There are, perhaps, no such places.

Heroin, sure. And other fine powders. Alchohol, let’s not forget it. Tobacco, chocolate, Coca-cola. Gambling.

Whoops, we seem to have included a behavioral disorder in with the chemicals. Social convention has placed it there, though, and I’m not going to be the one to remove it. So. Gambling is an addiction. I know a couple, so I can, if so moved, kick in with an anecdote or so to demonstrate solidarity with the consensus.

The behavioral addiction sheds light on all the others, though. The common noise I’ve heard about the source of addiction is heredity, emotional scarring, that sort of thing. The addict indulges his behaviors (chemicals, whatever) to get away from the pain of being — whatever he is.

Okay, sure. I’m willing to stipulate.

At this point you are all, wise people all of you, waiting for my pounce on these unsuspecting ideas, waiting for the venom that I’ll drip, the bile I’ll spit, the cliche of your choice emitted in an unseemly way from my metaphor’s body. Sorry, no blood today kids.

I think that’s kind of right, but it falls short.

Low Self-Esteem. Go ahead and shudder at the term. We’ve seen it driven into the ground, and it really out to be there. It doesn’t explain anything, it doesn’t enlighten. “Oh,” we say, “He’s got low self-esteem. That’s why he’s always down on himself.” We think we’ve said something. We have; we’ve uttered a tautology. We’ve said that someone acts like he’s down on himself because he believes that he is worth being down on.

Not going to fix or poo-pooh that one, either.

The thing is, we can look at the addictive behaviors for just the barest moment and come up with a list of commonalities. Go find a book on codependence and recovering addictive behaviors and you’ll get it. I almost don’t know why I’m even talking about this, except that I covered that in the third paragraph.

Like this: Alph, a nice enough guy who, for whatever reason, feels he is dispicable, cannot reconcile what he feels he should be with what he can or will do. He starts acting out in ways that make someone mutter, “low self esteem – tch.” I don’t care what Alph does at this point; spikes, snorts, rolls of the dice, whatever. They are, I think, very nearly trivial.

Yes, I said his addiction is trivial. Let it go.

The result of his addiction is not. It is, maybe, I think, the goal.

Our behavior defines us. We aren’t really just who we are inside. We are what we do, and we all believe that. You don’t believe that? ‘S’funny, you act like you do. Anyone who exercises good grooming and table manners is demonstrating that he believes that to some degree.

And addict has bad behaviors. He’s a bad person, or he wouldn’t have made those choices, grabbed the syringe, screwed fifteen sailors in one night, beaten his wife or kid, played the video game until his spouse ran to the arms of another — hey, have I defined those as addictive behaviors?

Well, then, let’s now. Addictive behaviors are, I suppose, behaviors that one has difficulty in stopping, and, the more one indulges them, the more one wants to or needs to.

So let’s take the wife beating as addictive. Alph doesn’t live up to whatever standard he thinks he should. He thinks he’s a bad person. He is deeply unhappy with that and, in turn, beats his wife. Now, Alph is not totally without feeling, and he knows that he’s pretty shitty as a person if he can beat his wife like that. In a perverse way, that pats Alph on the back. “I thought I was a shit, and look — I beat my wife. I am a shit.” Good on Alph; he called that one right on target. Thing is, he feels even worse about himself now. He had been a bad person for what was inside. Now there’s this behavior outside. He’s a real loser. It makes him even unhappier, and a little afraid, too; his wife, if she has any sense, would leave a loser like Alph. Say she doesn’t. Now Alph thinks less of her, so maybe it’s a little bit okay that he’s such a disappointment to her. He still knows that he’s a loss as a human being, though, and is less happy than ever. More beatings. See the cycle? Sounds addictive, doesn’t it?

If he keeps it up, he proves himself as a bad person, just like he thought he was. Satisfaction. If she takes it, she loves him in spite of his faults, and that feels good. But if he’s beating someone who loves him that much, he’s an even bigger shit than he thought, and that makes him hate himself more, so more beatings ensue. Eventually she leaves him.

Oh, good, Alph thinks somewhere way in the back where even he can’t hear it. I really am a worthless shit who can’t be loved, and now I get the shunning I deserve.

Take out the wife beating and put in gambling the family’s money away. Or buying drugs with the money. Or ruining the family by screwing anything that moves. Or ignoring the family until it disintegrates while you play games, overwork, whatever.

I think that addiction begins (I find, as I’m telling you all these things) with a conflicting set of emotions or expectations that aren’t being directed toward resolution. That results in predictable failure to meet one’s own expectations, and then a leap of false logic to which humans are all too prone kicks in. The false syllogism is this: If I am failing to meet expectations, I am not worthy as a human being.

I am prone to this. My addiction was spread over a few things; taking on even more responsibility until I could not help but fail, self-flagellation (metaphorical, but very vocal), and monstrous amounts of passive-aggression. I mean, like, rabidly hostile passive-aggression. I wanted more addictions, meaner ones, and actively considered them. I pulled back, though.

Now here’s where I don’t know enough. I stopped. All of it. I still fight with the conflicts, I still try to flagellate, to die on the cross, to punish myself until someone feels guilty. But I stop myself. I don’t want to be like that, and so I don’t. I like being me, when I’m good, and I love the people I am around and don’t want to hurt them — and addictive behaviors of all sorts are group sport, participation required of all on-lookers.

That’s the part I don’t understand. I know addicts. I know they love the people they love. They can see that they are hurting those people. But they don’t stop. I did it. I didn’t use twelve steps, I didn’t go to a higher power or get my demons exorcised (although I had suggested that holes in my skull to let them out might be a good thing). I did go to a shrink, but the patient does the work there. I went to speed things up, not to get saved.

I am not that special. There is nothing I do that everyone couldn’t do, if they wished. Some might have to try harder (or less hard, I suppose), but they could do it.

Is it a refrain of the unworthiness creed? I suck, so even though anyone could break the cycle of behavior, I can’t. I suck just that badly. Maybe, but that’s an addictive behavior as well, and I had that one, too. I don’t know how often I said, “I can’t help it, I have to, I have no choice.” Ask Ed; he probably kept some sort of score. Like, every time Scott says that, I’ll sip a beer.

Wow. That’s a lot.

So. Hm. There it is, I guess. A lovely thesis all prepped up, but no conclusions. I imagine that Ed is suggesting as a conclusion, “they don’t stop because they’re stupid.” Well, can’t fault that diagnosis, but it doesn’t explain much more than the low self esteem one.

Well. That’s all sorted out, and I’m sure I’ll figure a conclusion some time soon. I’m going to go do some blow and go to bed.

Crossposted from Epinepherine & Sophistry

“The need,” he said, stifling a yawn, “is an urgent one.”

Urgency. The word inspires. A matter of urgency is a matter of weight, a matter to be regarded with careful seriousness. Ugent issues, after all, are the ones attended to first, the issues that eclipse other questions of, well, less urgency.

Urgent does not, however, mean the same thing as important.


What, you are asking yourself, is this sap going on about? We’re getting to it. There are urgent issues at hand, first.


Urgent not important. Right. Urgent means, essentially, that something is time sensitive. The commercial I saw last night (was it for a melon baller or one of those clever razors that remove the little pills on blankets and sweaters?) spent quite a lot of effort convincing me of the urgent nature of my melon balling needs. Act now and for a limited time were mentioned, reaching a peak with order tonight and we’ll also–. I could hardly stay seated, the need to act on the moment was so strong.

And yet, here I am 18 hours later, undoubtedly far past my deadline, and I am not crushed at my inability to make old sweaters like new again. My family, probably from ignorance, still loves me, and my employers have not yet gotten word of my negligence; I will have a job tomorrow.

Urgent. Not important.


Now, let us take that step back and to the side for which I am becoming justly reknowned. People, by and large, do things for the same reasons my dogs do things. They have done them before, and found the results suited them. The sit, speak, and offer a paw in greeting, and they get a cookie. They go outside to pee and are get told they are good dogs. When they remember to put their dishes in the dishwasher or put the toilet seat down, we thank them. People are just that way, too.

No, I don’t mean that if you thank me for something, I’ll pee in your yard. Put some effort into this, will you? Try to keep up. I’m not going all that fast.

What I’m getting at is, people do things when the payoff suits them.

I have covered in other entries that your basic floor-model human being, one that doesn’t waste valuable time thinking, acts on three motives, those being fear, pain, and need. Most people have some fear that they are not sufficient to whatever standard they feel is appropriate. I work in a place where the majority of the people, especially the owners, not only don’t know if they are sufficient but suspect they don’t know how to tell. When one doesn’t know if one is doing the important things, but suspects one isn’t, shouting that there is a deep need for widgets inventory to be relaminated — now, dammit, now! — gives the appearance of knowing what is important and acting decisively on it.

As a side benefit, if it turns out that what really needed to be done was anchor the sidewalks more firmly and the person responsible is called to question, he can always defend himself with, “I would have, of course, but I was laminating widgets. Had to be done. Couldn’t be two places at once,” with a sad head shake.

So, more concisely, if everything one does is urgent, then one is important and defensible. Self-regard and parried accusation, all in a sweep.

The fellow off in the back right of the room is asking, “Don’t you always claim that you would, but there are important things about that you must do right now?”

Cringe, I believe, is the word for my action right now.

Yes, cringe. That’s the one.


People do things for the payoff. People are motivated by fear. Urgency is used as substitute for important. Now add this: My default assumption about me is, if I am failing to do something I should be doing, it is because I am utterly negligent

I wouldn’t have been, of course, but there were a lot of things that really had to be done right at that moment.

[facepalm]

How many times have I made my priority list based on time-relevancy? And what the hell does that have to do with what is important? If I base everything on time-relevence, all I will ensure is that I jam as many things as possible into my schedule. Did I get the important ones, though? Did I relate to my family and friends? Did I pursue my dreams? Did I, for Christ’s sake, spend an afternoon just being happy?

Or did I make sure that I ordered a melon baller and relaminated the widgets?

What am I going to do to change this behavior?

I’ll letcha know. I’ve got a bunch of really important things that just have to be done right now.


Thanks, Emily.

Crossposted from Epinephrine & Sophistry