time away
long time, no blog. it's been quite a week for me. the judge came back from her last trip o' the summer, then wife & whippersnapper left for the coast on wed. i've gotten a lot done @ work, but it seems i've sort of lost the will to write anything. or maybe just the ability; the will is there, but i can't seem to get anything out. or maybe it's something else.
{alert: confession approaching} see, i've got this tendency to "check out" on everyone now and again. i pretty much pull into myself, get pissed whenever the phone rings, have difficulty w/ even such easy tasks as making simple conversation. after having put various counselors through their paces, the consensus about me seems to be that "it" is probably a result of fatigue from the ever-present moderate insomnia, my own personality (i appear quite extroverted, but in reality i'm about as introverted a person as you're likely to meet), environment maybe (who knows how many of my foibles are directly traceable to too many summers in the wet mississippi heat), even psychological factors like having been adopted as a child, growing up "xtian" when i was really anything but, guilt over youthful rebellion, et cetera, ad nauseum, and other latin words as well. but i know, i know -- who wants to read a mediocre blogger's post about his own problems w/ self-esteem and generalized anxiety? certainly not me; and you're prefectly free to click on over to espn or wonkette or some other sexy blog written by a wordsmith superior to yours truly in practially every way imaginable.
but what i've been thinking about, if you're masochistic enough to read this though to the end (or perhaps so obsessive/compulsive that you can't stop reading anything, no matter how bad, once you've started), is that whenever i check out for a time, i check out on everything, god included, and, surprise!, that only exacerbates whatever problem it was that chased me to the ______ (insert comfy article of furniture in darkened room here). this week has been no different. the last few weeks, actually. but this week i think it started w/ the all star game, which is immediately preceded by the most boring day in sports for the entire year. sox aren't on; nfl training camp hasn't started; i could care less about where shaq's playing next year (unless it's boston); i'm not living in the hub right now so i can't just flip on weei and hear my nation brethren bemoaning '86 and all things bucky. and i get lackadaisical. overly confident. too passive. i'm lulled into thinking "i'll just get a short rest, then, when life's back in session, i'll hit the ground running right where i left off."
wrong.
in seminary, we had two (count 'em, two) reading weeks every semester. that meant there were two weeks w/ no classes, no assignments, no nothing. now, the prudent among us tended to use those times to begin writing papers that would be due @ the end of the semester or get ahead in our required reading, what have you. not i. those weeks were "the-wheels-fall-off-the-train" weeks around 214 washington ave., marblehead, mass. renee' would leave me early in the a.m. to head into the city for work (god bless her), and i would invariably have big dreams for my day. eight to ten hours later, however, i've watched the entirety of lonesome dove, four old x-files eps, maybe wandered around the beach, and i've spent $11.75 @ starbucks poring over the box scores. and inevitably, as sunday night rolled around, i would be wracked w/ guilt, bemoaning the fact that i'd gotten absolutely nothing done that week, which led then to great trepidation about starting anew on monday morning.
what i'm trying to say is: i understand lewis' screwtape letters b/c i live them. all the time. whenever i think i'm doing well, that i'm due a rest (or i'm "owed" anything, really), it is precisely then that i'm most susceptible to the reading week phenomenon. luckily i've not had enough free time this week to devolve wholly into the sedentary lifestyle of an avid movie-watcher/couch-sitter/dorito-muncher. i've checked out on god a bit, but not so much that i can't recall where i left him. i'm not feeling so guilty that i dread mass tomorrow or coming back to the office next week. and i definitely checked out on [rough draft], what w/ my having posted nothing substantive in a week now. but i'm slowly emerging, crawling back into the day and sticking my toe into the blogosphere. who knows? perhaps i'll even have something meaningful to say tomorrow or the next day. but for now, where'd i put those dorito . . . oh, there they are, right by the remote control!
{alert: confession approaching} see, i've got this tendency to "check out" on everyone now and again. i pretty much pull into myself, get pissed whenever the phone rings, have difficulty w/ even such easy tasks as making simple conversation. after having put various counselors through their paces, the consensus about me seems to be that "it" is probably a result of fatigue from the ever-present moderate insomnia, my own personality (i appear quite extroverted, but in reality i'm about as introverted a person as you're likely to meet), environment maybe (who knows how many of my foibles are directly traceable to too many summers in the wet mississippi heat), even psychological factors like having been adopted as a child, growing up "xtian" when i was really anything but, guilt over youthful rebellion, et cetera, ad nauseum, and other latin words as well. but i know, i know -- who wants to read a mediocre blogger's post about his own problems w/ self-esteem and generalized anxiety? certainly not me; and you're prefectly free to click on over to espn or wonkette or some other sexy blog written by a wordsmith superior to yours truly in practially every way imaginable.
but what i've been thinking about, if you're masochistic enough to read this though to the end (or perhaps so obsessive/compulsive that you can't stop reading anything, no matter how bad, once you've started), is that whenever i check out for a time, i check out on everything, god included, and, surprise!, that only exacerbates whatever problem it was that chased me to the ______ (insert comfy article of furniture in darkened room here). this week has been no different. the last few weeks, actually. but this week i think it started w/ the all star game, which is immediately preceded by the most boring day in sports for the entire year. sox aren't on; nfl training camp hasn't started; i could care less about where shaq's playing next year (unless it's boston); i'm not living in the hub right now so i can't just flip on weei and hear my nation brethren bemoaning '86 and all things bucky. and i get lackadaisical. overly confident. too passive. i'm lulled into thinking "i'll just get a short rest, then, when life's back in session, i'll hit the ground running right where i left off."
wrong.
in seminary, we had two (count 'em, two) reading weeks every semester. that meant there were two weeks w/ no classes, no assignments, no nothing. now, the prudent among us tended to use those times to begin writing papers that would be due @ the end of the semester or get ahead in our required reading, what have you. not i. those weeks were "the-wheels-fall-off-the-train" weeks around 214 washington ave., marblehead, mass. renee' would leave me early in the a.m. to head into the city for work (god bless her), and i would invariably have big dreams for my day. eight to ten hours later, however, i've watched the entirety of lonesome dove, four old x-files eps, maybe wandered around the beach, and i've spent $11.75 @ starbucks poring over the box scores. and inevitably, as sunday night rolled around, i would be wracked w/ guilt, bemoaning the fact that i'd gotten absolutely nothing done that week, which led then to great trepidation about starting anew on monday morning.
what i'm trying to say is: i understand lewis' screwtape letters b/c i live them. all the time. whenever i think i'm doing well, that i'm due a rest (or i'm "owed" anything, really), it is precisely then that i'm most susceptible to the reading week phenomenon. luckily i've not had enough free time this week to devolve wholly into the sedentary lifestyle of an avid movie-watcher/couch-sitter/dorito-muncher. i've checked out on god a bit, but not so much that i can't recall where i left him. i'm not feeling so guilty that i dread mass tomorrow or coming back to the office next week. and i definitely checked out on [rough draft], what w/ my having posted nothing substantive in a week now. but i'm slowly emerging, crawling back into the day and sticking my toe into the blogosphere. who knows? perhaps i'll even have something meaningful to say tomorrow or the next day. but for now, where'd i put those dorito . . . oh, there they are, right by the remote control!
posted by Sammy @ 12:12 AM
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