Screw Being Polite

For those not in on it, the joke is that I'm not actually polite or tactful.  Ah yes, mirth.

Anyway, now that I've acknowledged the peanut gallery, we can get on with our tale.  I'm sick and still in the first few days of learning to sleep properly when someone else is in the damn bed, so I am so cranky.  10^27 cranky.  I must have left my patience with people in my other pants.

For example, one of my work buddies was like "what are you doing with that one test box?"
me: "Touch it and die."

Got to keep it hidden away, away away....

Those who listen or care about the vox populi know that men are bad at expressing their feelings, or something to that effect.  I posit the following: everyone is bad at expressing their feelings.  Everybody.  No exceptions.  It's the easiest thing in the world to be depressed, or angry, or irritated, but it's next to impossible to remember to tell people.  Or even want to tell people.  Silly hu-mans.  So private.

The long and the short of it is that I continually disappoint my boss.  It's easy for me, because I have motivation issues and don't respect authority, but really the main problem is that I don't report when I have problems.  I can spend a whole hour in the morning meeting discussing what I'm going to do all day, all the while knowing that my brain is going to slide over to the internets as soon as we're done.  For the most part, this hasn't been a problem, because I'm paid hourly and I don't charge for brain-slide time, but I had a soul-crushing day on Friday and motivation is at a localized minimum.  dMotivation/dt = 0, fortunately, but still, not useful for productivity.  This brings us to today: I was supposed to get 4 hours of work done and I didn't get started until 2.5 hours after I should have.  Big mistake, in theory.

Once I got started, I was on fire.  However, getting started was Sisyphean.  I should have notified him: "dude, I spent the whole morning working on it and now I finally got the engine to turn."  Instead, I just kept working until I had to report in.  Didn't wanna, because I would have to explain that Friday fucked up my whole motivational process and that I didn't give a shit about anyone right now because there wasn't a pressing need for my services.

When I don't tell my boss why I have so little done, he's forced to assume I don't care.  People assume the worst when you don't tell them how you feel.  My friends tell me all the time "Oh, I can't go, my wife, you know, she funny".  I know.  Everybody funny.  Just tell me what the hell is going on so I don't sit here assuming that you guys are a bunch of immature dicks.

So yeah, I should tell people how I feel if it bothers me so much when they don't do the same for me.

Logical disconnects

My life is plagued by a series of very logical decisions that come together to make me look totally crazy.  Example:

• When I'm bored at work, I listen to music to distract the distractable  bits of my brain.
• I've recently rediscovered my love for fast latin music, like merengue (example), so it's on my playlist
• I have a desk that can switch between sitting and standing heights.  I feel out of shape, so I switched it to stand mode.

Conclusion?  I'm dancing at work.

God dammit.

I swear I don't know what happened

There's this game making a big splash in the "people who play games" circles.  It's called Minecraft, and the main draw of the game is essentially the fact that you get a huge goddamn world (8x the horizontal surface of planet earth)for exploration and building.  This interests some people, I guess.  Up until this weekend, I was one of the apathetic masses.

I want my weekend back.

Here's the thing.  My first experience with Minecraft?  Terrible.  My blocky little avatar got dropped onto a hillside with marauding skeletons and I died unceremoniously.  The game has absolutely no tutorial, no help screen, and only a cursory explanation of the controls in order to help the player, but is definitely a game where ignorance = death and boredom.  I wrote it off as "not for me."  This was maybe half a year ago.

Last weekend, I made the mistake of watching a video "surviving your first night in Minecraft".  If you happen to find a video like this, don't watch it.  Save yourself.  Frankly, it's fascinating.  Should send up all kinds of warning signs, like "Stay away from this if you want to accomplish anything."  So I watched it and promptly fell headfirst into the damn game.

I still don't care about building elaborate, pretty shit.  I'm not that kind of player.  Basically, I built a two-story shack on the beach, a little fenced-off wheat farm, and a grassy area for my logging operations.  Nothing fancy, just everything I need to survive.  It's all covered in lights so I really don't see any monsters (there are monsters at night now) in my neck of the woods (beach?).  Having secured my safety, I decided to abandon my mine somewhere in the hills and just dig into the hill behind my shack.  My goal?  Rock bottom.  I was going to construct a spiral staircase to the bottom of the whole damn world, and find some gold and platinum while I was at it (so I could have the best equipment ever).

So I was putting in the fourth glass floor of the glass-walled lava silo overlooking my hellish lava farm when I lost all of my buckets to a freak lava-related accident.  There's still more lava, but I'm not really in a position to harvest it...and what the hell am I doing?  When did I plunge headlong into super-villainy?  I was just trying to dig!

No need to trouble the police

Lately, it seems like panic is the best response. Mostly because it's the only option that's not actively (directly?) harmful towards other people, and not panicking is so tiresome.  I was on the panic and flee into a cave train, up until, I don't know, Monday.

Is it still called a psychotic break when you start being super productive instead?

The nice thing about completing tasks (besides the panic subsiding) is that it makes you feel goooooood.  Flow is a hell of a drug, and every box I check in my Google task list is another hit.  About five minutes ago, I checked the supertask of a bunch of subtasks and they all got checked in at the same time. 

Aw yeah.  That's the stuff.

My sleep schedule, as usual, has taken the hit for this one, but my body, knowing me, has developed a kind of sleep inertia.  I can keep going for a couple of days with little problem, but the moment I sleep, I can't get up 'till it's satisfied or until I trick it into believing I'm about to die.  Ergo, my alarm clock is a random mix of warning sounds.

It's another one of those choose two trifectas, like "good, fast, and cheap" or "omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent," only this one pits sanity against productivity and, uh, hmm.  What was it?

I'm a little loopy.  You'll have to forgive the dug up yard: I put all the dirt back.  Bob?  No I haven't seen Bob.  Why?

It would be my leitmotif when striding into battle

You're highly unlikely to hear a genuine song about unaided, unadulterated procrastination ('Cause I Got High doesn't count).  The reason should be obvious: you write what you know, and, in this case, "what you know" and "writing" are mutually exclusive.

I would like to have such a song.  I get over being angry by listening to angry music and get over being depressed by listening to depressing music.  Maybe this last key is all I need to take over the world.

I make people jealous

Or, women, rather.  I don't understand why, because no one should be jealous or envious of me.  Well, maybe homeless people.  But still.

In the last couple of weeks, people (read: women) have told me the following:

"I'm so jealous of your hair." (my hairline is receding at enough of a rate that I have dreams about being Hulk Hogan.)

"How can you eat so much?  You must be 20 pounds overweight." (I am.  At least.)

"You're kind of my fashion icon.  I like how you don't care about your clothes." (Well, I don't, but I don't get any respect, either.)

"I wish I weren't so depressed.  You're always so happy and lucky." (Ok, that was a dude.)

It's true, the grass is always greener.  I heard an interview on NPR with some guy who wrote fiction about being depressed and also a family; he mentioned that he viewed minor, non-clinical depression as a kind of survival mechanism for people with shitty lives, like the Jews (his words).  Expect shittiness, and when you get it, you won't feel so bad.  I don't know where he gets his depression, because mine is all about being unable to function and having that prevent you from functioning.

I've heard that it's like ADHD; you have only so much concentration to spend on things that bore you/make you anxious and ADHD sufferers basically don't have a full stock like some people.  It may be possible to drain your supply so constantly that it's like you have some sort of problem without legitimately feeling like you're allowed to self-diagnose because then you would be another in the army of people ruining the American health care system.  Fortunately, it may very well be that the solution is to fix the stuff that's draining your supply.  Unless you're Jewish, apparently, in which case you're doomed to permanent pessimism and the resultant depression.

Meanwhile, ladies, really: be born Hispanic (ok, use only a Starburst-shaped amount (the candy) of shampoo and wash the roots of your hair (condition throughout) every other day), add 28 grams of dietary fiber to your diet (one of only a few proven ways to prevent insulin spikes), and, well, don't expect to get hired for any management positions.  Oh, and dude, when you're depressed, you remember all the bad things and none of the good, so you have a bias and that's why you think other people are happier.  It's Science.