tearing up the oxygen

so, i came home early so that i could install my new DVD writer before i became too nonfunctional to use a screwdriver (speeding towards that point where feelings cease to exist again, thanks to various chemical substances), but instead i found myself thinking a lot. trying again, even though i know somewhere in my brain that it's stupid, to find a logical backbone to my illogical thoughts/feelings, hoping that if i can make sense of them, maybe i can better understand them. or at the very least set them on fire and cackle with glee while they die. except i guess i couldn't cackle with glee if i was unable to feel glee. huh.

i was thinking, particularly this time, about the difference between worrying and sadness, at least for me. for the first week or so i was here, i was worried pretty much sick. about money, about school, about commitments, about the future, about my car...you name it, we got it. then, suddenly lately, that feeling went away. so i wanted to know why. here's why.

worrying, for me, i think, is a sort of emotion caused by an unconscious process in my brain that is telling me that i haven't done all i can do yet. in any particular situation, if i have done one hundred percent of what i think i'm capable of doing, then, regardless of the outcome, i don't worry. what's the point? this seems like a pretty intense application of logic to emotions and the quelling of. and it's largely constructive. it cuts way down on unnecessary worrying, and it also prompts me to actually do things that are hard or complicated or scary, things that i might not otherwise do. i can't get away with not doing them because there's always that little voice in the back of my head which says "you haven't tried your hardest and i'm going to fuck with you until you do". fair enough. i should be trying my hardest.

sadness is not so easily wrangled by logic, it seems. i think it's because it is the progression of worry in situations where i can't actually do one hundred percent of what i want to do. and i don't mean just because i'm scared, or tired, or whatever, but instead because going all the way (so to speak) is just not possible. usually this is because certain situations involve other groups, or people, or other things that i just can't run ramshackle over (unlike, say, a list of errands i have to run which are semi-easily accomplished). other people's thoughts and desires and wishes and lives have to be taken into consideration, and sometimes that rubs up against what i think i should be doing for myself. simply squashing those things would make me a despot, which i don't really see myself as (though the cape and cowl would be nice). also, the second reason for sadness is that things end, and break, and don't work. often they are then reborn as something else, but the new versions aren't for us like the old versions were; they're for someone else, leaving us to deal with that loss. it's nature's way of saying "hey, even stars die eventually. live with it". it's not pleasant, but it's reality, and as much as lots of people seem to want to live in a false, more comfortable reality, and want to avoid things in the hope that they'll just disappear, or that their minds will simply concoct a slightly smaller reality where those bad things no longer exist and all the good things do...that's not really for me. i guess it's just because i think you have to acknowledge that things can break and end and blow your fingers off when you try to disarm them to make anything mean anything in the first place. if we didn't die, for example, life would be pretty pointless. there'd be no reason to care about anything or to do anything.

i don't know if that makes sense.

as a sidenote, i got electrocuted unplugging my laptop when i was leaving avery and now the fingers on my left hand don't really work right. well, they do, but i have to think really hard about each finger when i want to move it. fortunately i've electrocuted myself enough times that i can be pretty sure it's nothing serious and will right itself shortly.

mmm...van de graaf generators.

everything seems like a circle lately. maybe that's what happens when you neurotically spend 14 hours a day thinking about your life for like a week. just be glad i'm not high, too.

dude, man, did you ever realize...like...that the earth is a circle? i mean, like, geographically or topographically or whatever, but also metaphorically? like, both ways. and everything comes around! and then...yeah. totally!