I don't usually write in the morning. My head never feels like it gets things together until minimum 5 or 6 pm. Whether I have a morning routine and wake up consistently before my alarm clock or not, it's just not my time. Starting this now, 9:52 am before I have work things to get done around noon, is because I want to write through this persistent feeling I wish I never had. It's that “tired” and “stiff” and “indignant” sense that reacts to texts and small asks of my attention as a mild shock of negativity with each sound from my phone. It's the feeling I carried into practically every school day. It's the space of indifferent indecisiveness which seems to dictate a significant portion of my existence.
The last few days I've been reading over my “Understanding Yourself” personality test from Jordan Peterson. I was a psychology major. I've written nearly 730 blogs about myself and my experiences over the last 14 years. This test didn't give me a whopping dose of insight, but it did give me numbers. I then watched a few people discuss their results and see how their results matched with their ideas of themselves or how their friends perceived them. Most of my numbers didn't lie in extremes besides the things you'll know about me within about 2 minutes of meeting me. What I mostly liked was that the things I scored moderately on are things I've worked on making less extreme.
The people who take this test, I must assume, are cut from the same kinds of cloth. Who doesn't want to know more about themselves? I remember watching a psychologist tell The Iceman killer how he scored on The Big Five traits and the guy teared up. Nobody had offered that kind of demonstrable and calculable insight into his behavior before. He was no longer “just a killer” or monster. The more aware you are of the reasons for your behavior, the more you can conceive of a choice in how you respond to it. When the test says I'm excessively impolite, I can go out of my way to listen more, choose nicer language, and forgo arguments I'm persistently willing and capable of having.
But back to the morning haze. What can I be aware of in this moment that doesn't make me go to the gym for an hour, shower up early, prepare breakfast, and go into my day like I give half a shit about my drive to Columbus with a dude I've never met? Why do I know, even if I push it to the last minute, the task is probably going to get done, even if as I write this sentence I'm skeptical and resentful of my own being being true to its word? What is that? That didn't come up in the test results, so to speak, except to say my, now, moderate levels of industriousness means I'll slog through tasks. But there's a deeper demon there. There's the one that wants to sleep, or die, or struggle with the choice of bothering to invest in less than he desires.
Because what do I desire? I want a measure of things I can take for granted. If you're “hyper aware” of things, you get tired. Always I know the ten things I'm not doing that I either “should” or want to. I find the energy immediately when the opportunities present themselves. I got sent a text by accident saying there was something an old neighbor of mine wanted to show me. I go from half asleep lounging on the couch to dressed and excited in 30 seconds, just quick enough for him to text me saying he realized his mistake. It's always there. If some Ed McMahon-esc workout guru kicked in my door and said we're rushing outside to do the Use It Or Lose It Challenge and upon doing so I get free healthy meals delivered to my door for life, well, I'll be puking in the street an hour from now having betrayed my body who's never been able to handle that level of exertion in the morning.
I have an avoidance mechanism for pain, but I sit in a kind of existential one at all times. That may just be being an adult, that may just be I'm too smart and dumb to know better. I don't want to have people pissed off at me for dropping the ball at a job I hate, any more than I wanted to flunk out of school. I'm not really thinking I can't handle a hundred more poor opinions of me and where I'm coming from in “friends” opining. I'm pretty openly hostile that you have much of anything to say about me or the left field wilderness from where I might make my next choices. Is simply having that feeling more important than it being true? Is the mundane structure and slow self-immolation the contrasting power from which I draw all of mine? Because, devoid of ego, you don't really exist after all, right? Relationships do. I'm at the intersection of my particles and the places they concurrently exist. My overweight begrudging slog capable of indefinitely delayed gratification and affordable placation outweighs my “ideal” day and things I wish I had organized well enough to rarely if ever think about. I'm an apt analogy for what I might think to criticize about reality.
It starts with a feeling though. I feel “bleh.” I feel the tension behind my eyes already. I stretch what I take to be the budding arthritis in my hand. I have about an hour and a half before I need to get up or else. Why don't I “do more?” Why don't I take the time to cook healthier meals instead of start to hate the idea of chicken and salad after 6 days in a row as an entire 2nd package starts to spoil and dry out that was supposed to be for another week? Why don't I just take the 5 minutes to print the things I need to print and update my calendar? I could have done it between this and the last paragraph as I read up on what to call what I'm assuming to be pre-arthritis.
Intellectually, I know I can always feel worse than I do, but I never get there. I'm not sad enough to do the kind of drugs that would compromise my life. I'm not indignant enough to throw my overwhelming hatred at the feet of people who are dumber and in iller positions than me to try and change something. I'm not dumb enough to believe there's a “good reason” I can't overcome my behavior. And I'm certainly not hopeful or deluded enough to think that if I were on point, every day, doing every single thing I thought I needed to do along one metric or another at the highest levels that it's going to win me any friends or amount to more than the giant pile of “stuff I'm kinda familiar with” I already have in my wake.
I'm a man of consequences, but only so much. I'm responsible insofar. People don't respond to my asks to be something more, and nobody's asking me in return. So this blog will do. I can wave my pass at the fast food window. I can floss, or not. Shower, tomorrow. Wait until I've got 3 or 5 more paychecks before I “try” again. Why investigate my hand or get my gums checked out? I don't have health insurance. Why get in shape? I've never needed to before, and am not quite sure I want a prolonged experience of this kind of empty and unmotivated baseline. Why eat up the extra hour of my day trying to “eat healthy” when I'm always left unsatisfied, hungry, and food goes to waste? Who am I eating healthy for? What example am I setting?
I don't have the disgust or guilt requisite to sustain these kind of changes. I need ideas. I need something to believe in. I need to see forward progress or the impact I have on others. And, I don't. I'm my little string of words and billable hours and Trakt hours counters. Occasionally, I wake up refreshed and uncharacteristically happy and clear-headed. Then I talk to someone. Then I get that shitty email. Then I remember what a car accident could do to my mild stability. Cheers with the expensive beer and pass the cheeseburger. Sure, I'll get around to that 2 minute task tonight around 11:30 after I've walked the dog, played drums with empty water bottles, and pretended to be more incensed by the implosion of the country after some article I read. It doesn't get better.
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